Do They Look For ‘Parasites’ In Right Place?

If you reduce the number of real parasites, then public transport can be made free.

Previously, they scared us that since 2020 Belarusians would pay 100 percent for utility services. Apparently, these plans are being put off. The plans to pull money under the “decree on parasites” also failed, writes Siarhei Salauyou in an article on the Novy Chas website.

It was planned that since October 1, those “not employed in the economy” should have paid for gas and heat supply at 100% tariffs. But the term of this payment was postponed to May 2020. Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Protection of Belarus Andrei Labovich explained such postponement for “parasites” by the fact that allegedly it was not possible to process all the information about the citizens not engaged in the economy. According to the official, it comes from almost 50 (!) sources.

How much efforts the authorities paid to count these “parasites”! They sent communal services workers, officers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, teachers to go round people’s houses. The Ministry of Education has also created a “student base” to exchange information with the Ministry of Labor. And in the end, they enlisted everyone: women on maternity leave, pensioners and even those who died. Only to “justify” the words of the senior leader about 500 thousand “not engaged in the economy”. It ended in the ordinary way. Of course, they counted 500 thousand - in our state, the leader is never mistaken. But in fact it turned out that these are “dead (sometimes in the literal sense of the word) souls”.

And from the “dead souls” you will not take payment. So they had to postpone the “replenishment of the budget”.

Meanwhile, an interesting thing follows from the words of Labovich - the plans regarding the fact that since 2020 all Belarusians will not pay 100 percent for utilities, as was previously announced several times, are being postponed. Gas and heat supply are part of the housing and communal services. However, even if for “parasites” the full payment for these services was postponed till May next year, then there can be no talk of “honest” citizens.

The authorities are probably going to solve the confusion with data “from 50 sources” simply.

Writer Viktar Martsinovich drew attention to interesting census questions. There are no questions in the questionnaire about how many languages a person speaks, about other normal things. “This is not important for the state. What is important for it is where exactly you live, to which telephone number the identifier in your passport is attached, what property you own, where you work. Do you plan to leave Belarus (read - for part-time jobs)? Did you have a job from September 27, 2019 to October 3, 2019 (why, by the way, such a period?)? How often did you go to work in the territory of another state? There are two out of four such questions in the questionnaire! Read these wording: “What are the sources of livelihoods (indicate the main source!)?” “Where is your work?” “Where is your place of work?” he writes. And he notes - this is not statistics. This is a nationwide interrogation to identify these very same “parasites”.

I don’t know to which extent such trick of the state will work. Belarusians have been frank so far, but they are not fools. Some even tried to take a census of their pets via the Internet, thereby invalidating the results of the “republican interrogation”.

Meanwhile, the government spends money, which it allegedly has nowhere to take. And there is no understanding yet how much to take, because we do not know how much will be needed. For example, the gas contract with Russia ends this year, and negotiations on this issue took place this week. Moreover, these talks relate not only to gas, but also to the volume of supplies.

First of all, the volume may be lower due to the launch of the BelNPP - with the transfer of part of the electricity to the nuclear power plant, the country will need less gas. And if the nuclear power plant does not start?

In addition, Russia insists on resolving this issue after developing roadmaps as part of an integration program. As you know, roadmaps should be prepared by December. It is planned that the rulers of the countries will sign them on December 8, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the “union treaty”. And if they don’t sign it?

Earlier it was reported that the gas agreement is not included in the package of integration documents. Deceived again?

Therefore, the authorities routinely take money where it supposedly exists: from the pockets of the population. In Minsk, ticket collectors got the right to stop buses and trolleybuses at “unplanned stops” and get into the cabin to find stowaways.

It is hard to say how much this will increase the collection of fines. It is unlikely that the amount will be huge. However, what can be said for sure - this will cause (and already causes) strong discontent of the people. “Where are we going to? Are we catching criminals? I have been to many countries of the world - and this is just a humiliation of the people, I am ashamed of the country! ” can be heard in Minsk buses. Moreover, as reported by the journalists who traveled with ticket collectors on the first day of such a practice, not the stowaways are indignant, but those who honestly paid the fare.

Indeed, such a practice of forced stopping of transport is the humiliation of all passengers. It turns out that initially all of them are considered potential offenders, and only then they figure things out …

Meanwhile, the state, in fact, is full of money. It’s only necessary to know how to save it. Think about it: the idea of a “decree on parasites” appeared in 2014 - five years ago! How much effort, finance, and man-hours of work have been spent over this time to bring it to life? How much does a meeting of “parasite commission” cost to taxpayers? How much money (and the work of programmers is not cheap) is needed to process the “data from 50 sources”?

Only on the rejection of the “decree on parasites” we would save so much that we could buy gas at world prices and not to be bothered by “integrations”.

And if we shortened the staff of ideologists - no one knows what the “Belarusian ideology” is anyway - we could probably make the transport free.