"Even The Pakistanis Refused To Work For That Kind Of Money."
- 5.12.2025, 11:34
How Lukashenko is driving people into poverty.
Belarus has again found itself in the outsiders of the region in terms of the minimum wage - 726 rubles.
Why, with almost European prices, the minimum wage in Belarus remains so low - about €200?
About it Charter97.org talked to the famous blogger Dmitry Kozlov ("Gray Cat"):
- The minimum wage has been so low all the time, Br726 - you still have to get it. I'm sure that not everyone gets such wages in Belarus, and I have examples of that.
Why is it so low? Because of the inefficiency of the economy, because, first of all, there is no money. Lukashists think how to pay such wages. If you take various depressed regions - Vitebsk, Mogilev region, the outskirts of Gomel region, unprofitable collective farms and enterprises that are going bankrupt - there is simply no money there. There are huge debts, nothing to pay with.
Dictator Lukashenko will say once or twice: "There are no wages there. How will I pay?" Inefficient economy, dictatorial regime, lack of free trade unions that could fight for normal wages and protect the rights of workers.
- Who in Belarus really receives the "minimum wage" - €200 a month? Is it possible to live on this money?
- It is possible to survive. But the question is whether it is normal or not. Who gets such salaries? You see, there is such a practice when people are hired not for a full or even half a rate, but for a quarter of a rate. If you try to add up the full rate, the salary can be even the same 700 rubles, but in fact a person does not and cannot get such a salary. There will be 200 rubles. For example, a nurse in a boarding house for the disabled - a person told me a year ago, when I was in the colony: here she gets 200 rubles. Right now she receives 200 rubles, not 700 rubles, but only 200 rubles. People live: naturally, they have a subsidiary farm, because this is a village. So people somehow survive on this.
We see that because of this huge outflow of population: people go to the cities to find something there, some kind of work. There are not enough workers for such wages. Lukashenko tried to enslave them by means of de facto serfdom, to give them such "wolf tickets" that they could not be hired anywhere. But people are still fleeing from Lukashenko's regime and his bondage. The dictator tried to bring in Pakistanis, but the Pakistanis refused to go and work for such money, so I don't know what he will do.
- What can the Belarusians, forced to live on such sums, do? Do they have real ways out of poverty under the current system?
- The question is quite non-trivial, as they say. If someone can do something: to retrain for a better-paid job, to get some help from relatives to help them somehow.
- In other cases it is quite difficult to think of something. Because if a person lives somewhere in the regions, if he/she has no connections, if he/she has no profession, if he/she can't get it, if he/she has no ability, for example, to work in a specialty that allows to get normal money - then people are simply trapped. In order to even retrain, they need time, if not money: someone has to support them while they study, and there are no opportunities. So they are caught in a vicious circle: there is a low-paid job, and to get a better one, you need a safety cushion - and there is none.
And what should they do? It's hard to say. First and foremost - they need to get rid of the dictatorship. This will be the easiest way to liberate business, introduce social assistance programs and so on. Because in the current situation it is difficult to answer what Belarusians can do. The situation on the part of the regime looks like a mockery - it repeats the phrase said by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: "There's no money, but you hang in there". Belarusians cannot put up with this.