Soap Bubbles of Official Statistics :: Charter'97 :: News

Among the figures, which are monthly published by the Ministry of statistics, there appear some optimistic data. However, the general situation in the society is quite upsetting: in stores babushkas are peering hard into the meat rows in search for sausages and soups, homeless are digging deep in the trash cans, hoping to find glass bottles, villagers tell in the trains that somebody stole last night vegetables from their winter reserves.

Friends and colleagues talk only about money. How can we survive till next salary payment? Nobody really feels that life became easier and better.
Some groups of people are on the edge of extinction, for instance, the collective farmers. Never in the past 50 years was there a situation when they wouldn’t be paid at all. See for yourselves: by the end of the first autumn month even according to the official statistics, 80% of those employed in agriculture, haven’t been paid due wages fully or partially. That stands for 470thsd people. Taking into account all their many children, this figure could grow to millions of people, who are desperate to make their ends meet.
Meantime, it is considered that the population’s incomes are speedily going uphill. May be, they forget about peasants, not considering them normal citizens at all.
There are also other categories of laborers, who can also be referred to as economically retarded. With an average salary of $120 in industry, the petroleum companies workers receive some $200, while the seamstresses are getting no more than $80 a month, to say nothing of medics and librarians, whose August salaries equaled to $60. Their regular income is equal to the size of the minimal living budget, which is insufficient for survival.
As concerns pensioners, not even once in the last eight years the size of the average monthly salary reached the minimal consumers budget of this category of people. The composition of the consumer’s basket for pensioners contains less of such “harmful” for elderly people’s health products as meat, sausages but more milk, kefir, fruits. But even these lighter goods are too costly for pensioners, who can’t afford buying them.
Meantime, mysterious things are occurring at the consumers’ market. For instance, when incomes really go uphill, the amount of industrial goods in the consumption rises while food falls, although the share of the more valuable products among the latter is increasing. Our population now consumes less meat, butter, cheese and dairy products, replacing them with cheap cereals and macaroni.
Remarkable growth dynamics was also demonstrated by the public utilities companies. For instance, apartment rent and tariffs on public utilities went 6 times up. In general, their services soared up twice in cost. The government claims that it is not a final limit at all.
In other words, when we compare official statistics against living realities, its “trustworthiness” blows up as a soap bubble.