Taxi Drivers From Brest Went on Hunger Strike :: Charter'97 :: News

Owners of “marshrootkas” (taxi cars or shuttles) from Brest announced a hunger strike. Self-employed entrepreneurs protest against necessity to pay to the budget tens of millions of Belarusian rubles additionally from every car for their commercial application. This payment was introduced by Lukashenka’s decree number 140 last year in April; however tax inspections consider it concerns those entrepreneurs who had imported their cars from abroad much earlier. As a result, each of the owners of marshrootkas must pay from 25 to 50 millions rubles to the budget additionally.

These bills are prepared only for some owners of the cars still, which failed to prove to tax inspection and economic court that the law cannot have a retroactive force. Businessmen believe that soon this fee would be imposed on other entrepreneurs, and not only in Brest.

Since the morning of September 20 self-employed entrepreneurs Liubou Rezanovich and Liubou Laurukovich have been waiting for reaction to their address to the Brest authorities. In this address the women required to define a place where the supporters of the protest could gather. They need premises so that the authorities could see that a hunger strike had started in reality. However, according to Mrs. Laurukovich, there is no hope for positive answer by the regional executive committee in this case.

Businesswoman Liubou Rezanovich tells that they were forced to take such measure as the hunger strike.

“Now we refuse to eat, in two or three weeks, if authorities would not react, we shall refuse to drink. We shall be dying of hunger, as we do not have money for paying this,” she said.

As said by Mrs. Rezanovich, she personally and four her colleagues have already started hunger strike. About twenty local entrepreneurs are ready to join them.