Minsk regional association of parents with many children intends to engage in the People’s March “For Better Life!”. Its members are ready to take to the streets on March 12 in order to force the government to solve the problems encountered by the families with many children. Today lots of them are totally forsaken by the state and dwell on the edge of extinction.
Charter’s press-center was told by the representatives of the Minsk regional organization of parents with many children Teresa Lasovskaya and Svetlana Zolmanis, that the state had simply betrayed them. Such families face numerous problems, which the authorities don’t really bother to solve. The main problem is the rise in the cost of public utilities, which grew particularly expensive over the past period. The size of the payment is calculated according to the number of tenants in the house. For instance, Teresa Lasovskaya with a husband and four children is living in a single-room apartment and got to pay 86thsd Belarusian rubles for public utilities every month. It is extremely tough for a family of six to afford such payments.
Families with many kids have been deprived almost of everything today. If previously these families could get some privileges, such as free nutrition in school, social dinners, free medications etc., then now the state stripped them of all things. Free canteen in schools has been cancelled this year. Free dinners are only served to the junior schoolchildren. There’s no more social nutrition as such (a certain list of foodstuffs, juices, vitamins). As said by Tereza Lasovskaya, these are given out only to the poorest, almost starving families. Free medications are the cheapest and worst ones. Belarusian families with many kids don’t event dream of getting an apartment of their own, so that they would have to sleep in one room with four children.
The females from the Minsk regional association of families with many children addressed all different institutions, pleading for help. However, neither the executive councils, nor the district education department, let alone social defense bodies proposed to them a decent resolution of the problem. The officials became so insolent that they oftentimes yell at the women: “Don’t give birth to so many next time”. These cruel words, says Lasovskaya, pretty much illustrate the indifferent state policy towards such families. In the meantime, state official declare in public that Belarusian families should be getting more kids. None of them will do anything himself to help those with three and more children.
This huge amount of unsolvable problems, which doesn’t get any smaller, keeps growing. At seeing a newspaper ad about the People’s March “For Better Life!” in “Vecherny Minsk” newspaper the women determined to take part in the action. “The state abandoned us and keeps us in oblivion. Following many years of fight for the rights, we’ve got only one chance left – to take to the streets and say “no” to the permanent pennilessness, misery and lack of perspectives”, - said with determination female representatives of the Minsk regional association of parents, having many children.
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