Belarus-Style Work: Unloaded Five Tons For $ 40 Per Month

The way people survive in Vitsebsk region.

A Belsat channel crew has visited Sharkaushchyna. Sharkaushchyna region is considered the most problematic in the country: from year to year, it occupies either the last, or the next-to-last place in terms of average earnings. Each resident is looking for ways to survive.

Alena, the heroine of the footage, works in the boiler room of a local store. For a year, her salary has changed: now she receives not Br 94 per month, but Br 86. At that, the woman does back-breaking work, for example, unloads firewood or briquettes. This year, Alena has unloaded more than 5 tons of fuel.

For 86 rubles. The way people survive in the most depressive region of Belarus | Poverty in Belarus

Other Sharkaushchyna residents share their experience of survival in the conditions of unemployment.

Ihar is a history teacher, but he quit his job to feed his family and went to work in Moscow. After staying there for 4 years, the man moved to Minsk and became a taxi driver, two years later he returned to Sharkaushchyna. Now he teaches halftime a child on individual tuition.

Yazep is another resident of this region. He worked at the local school for 19 years, but it was closed because of a shortage of students. Now Yazep and his wife work as social workers and also own a large household that helps the family survive.

"Anyone who wants to live in the village, will be able to, but one must work hard," – Yazep says.