Getting Free Porridge

In fact it's Belarusian old people and young mums who are queueing to get free porridge, not Poles and Lithuanians.

Education Minister Andrei Ivanets said about the need to increase tuition fees in higher education institutions in Belarus, writes Salidarnasts.

The official gave the reasons: last year's inflation was 16%, respectively, the salary, according to Ivanets, has grown no less. And the cost of education was allegedly raised by less than 7%. It's not good.

The minister gave approximate figures: "The costs are growing annually by 15-17%, we believe that the increase in cost will not go beyond this amount".

According to "Nasha Niva," now fee-payers are forced to sign an additional agreement with universities. The ONT story says that a student of BSU, who paid about Br5 thousand a year, signed a paper, stating that allegedly the full cost of education is actually three times higher.

The publication assumes that with this additional agreement Ivanets' department wants to show the students and their parents that they do not pay the full tuition fee. Accordingly, they should work off the compulsory assignment, which they now want to introduce for fee-paying students as well.

And this is how it turns out. It seems that in the country of set prices it is not customary to voice all these frightening figures and terms at such a level. However, if it is necessary to point "villeins" to their place, it is possible to talk about 16% inflation at ease. And about the growing costs of education year by year.

The main thing here is that the Minister of Utilities does not pick up the idea. Otherwise, homeowners could be forced to sign new agreements so that they can see who is heating the water in their pipes. And that's after the prices for communal services have been raised.

And this is news from Vitsebsk. The local authorities have decided to raise the level of patriotism of the city residents to the sky by erecting a 60-metre flagpole. So that no one doubts the expediency, they painted a frightening picture saying that rejection of such a useful idea "will lead to the absence of a zone of patriotic enrichment and recreation of the population".

It is curious, how is it in local hospitals with oxygen enrichment points, about the lack of which Vitsebsk doctors were writing about during the Covid rampage? It would not be superfluous to remind you that Vitsebsk hospitals were among the first to suffer the blow at the very beginning of the pandemic. And they encountered it, to put it mildly, not fully armed.

But, apparently, after the unwanted doctors left to treat Germans, Poles and Lithuanians, the officials can think about the "high" with peace of mind.

The other day there was a story of its own in Homel. A local blogger captured on video a huge queue stretching for hundreds of metres. Everything would be all right, but that day the city was celebrating the 80th anniversary of liberation from Nazi invaders.

And judging by the length of the queue, one of the most popular moments of the holiday was the distribution of free soldier's porridge. Pensioners and mothers with prams were queuing to get it. Some did not manage to.

This news arouses double feelings. It turns out that our ancestors shed blood so that their descendants would stand in queues for free porridge?

However, the distribution of free food is a common thing. In the West, where volunteering and charity are not elevated to the rank of crimes against the state, anyone can get a free food kit or a hot lunch.

But it turns out to be strange somehow - in our TV set, our unfriendly neighbours are mostly starving and freezing, while in reality Belarusian old people and young mothers queue for porridge.