New anecdote from Belarusian authorities

Statements by Minsk city executive committee officials are like bad jokes.

This is how the deputy chairman of the Belarusian Independent Trade Unions Congress Siarhej Antusievich commented for the charter97.org web-site on the statement by an official Tacciana Kudzievich, who said that a low level of unemployment benefits stimulates better job-hunting.

“This statement looks like a new anecdote from the authorities. In reality the unemployment allowance’s level of 10 euro has long been there. Naturally, not every person, who loses a job or cannot find it will never go for such a miserable allowance. It is clear that the average unemployment allowance cannot exceed the average country’s salary, but it cannot be that miserable. One must understand that a person must satisfy at least some needs. I do not know how a person can survive for 120 thousand roubles a month. It is not always that you can pay for the utilities with that money. This is just nonsense. If we are talking about an incentive, they could cancel the unemployment benefits at all, so people would run around looking for any job”, - the trade union leader highlighted.

He noted that the unemployment is below 1% in Belarus, according to the official data.

“One must proceed from that fact that the economy in the country is mainly state-controlled and non-reformed. We could say that the employment is quite high, but we could have known the real unemployment level had the economy been of market nature. Unemployment is bad, and it should be as low as possible. But we see that in developed countries this percentage is noticeably higher that in Belarus, but we cannot speak of any economic prosperity of Belarus. In many countries of Europe and the USA unemployment benefits are enough for living, and people often do not aim to find a job only because there is little difference between an unemployment allowance and the minimum wage. But this is a different side of the medal”, - Siarhej Antusievich believes.

We would remind that labour, employment and social protection committee’s deputy chairman and the head of the employment department of the Minsk city executive committee Tacciana Kudzievich claimed that a low level of unemployment benefits stimulates better job-hunting.