New ‘Social Parasites’ Decree: Pay For Services If You Don’t Work

How will the updated decree on “parasites” work?

The implementation of the norms of the updated Decree #3 “On the prevention of social parasitism” will be in the competence of the local authorities. Minister of Labour and Social Protection Iryna Kastsevich told this to the journalists upon the results of the consultative session with Lukashenka, BelTA reports.

“The Decree #3 is not abolished, but the government offers new approaches to stimulating employment of the population. The focus is on the executive authorities at the local level. First of all they work with employable citizens in the aspect of activization, stimulation and facilitating employment. The executive authorities should provide an opportunity to work for everyone who can and want to work, and facilitate their employment ", — Iryna Kastsevich told.

The government also proposes to implement the "pay for services if you don’t work" principle. This refers to the services that are currently subsidized from the state budget, the list will be determined by the government which is now working in this direction," — the Minister said.

In other words, it is assumed that able-bodied citizens who are not engaged in the economy will pay for the services subsidized at the expense of the state budget at a cost that provides reimbursement for their rendering. However, all the options of how to build the work in this direction are still being studied. Local authorities will also be engaged in developing this list of services. Perhaps, they will specify the general list proposed by the government for their regions.

To implement such an approach to stimulate employment, databases will be created with information on the type of activity of each citizen. "You know that by the end of 2018 there is a task to create the Belarusian integrated service-accounting system - ID-card. The receipt of this ID-card and the connection through a nationwide automated information system to departmental databases will allow to see the person: whether they work today or not. If this brings no effect, then the state will already render services in a completely different way, " — she explained.