In accordance with the decree of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, as of this year, non-employed able-bodied citizens must pay utility bills in full. “Minsk-News” correspondent found out how it will look in practice.
The officially unemployed citizens will receive new bills in February: from January 1, they will have to pay full price of hot water. And from October 1, they will have to pay for heating at increased tariffs.
“From January 1, 2019, if one of the tenants is on the list, the payment for housing and utility services in a typical two-room apartment (48 square meters with three residents) will increase by about 6.5 rubles, and if there are two residents in the list, it will increase by 13 rubles,” the First Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Protection Andrei Labovich explained.
All non-employed able-bodied citizens are accounted for and put in a separate database, access to which is open to all citizens. At the end of 2018, there were about 500 thousand people listed.
Belarusians working abroad are automatically included in the list of “social parasites”. The lists are drawn by special commissions working with personal information of Belarusians.
It was often said that the “social parasites” would pay for other services that are subsidized by the state, and the people “not occupied in the economy” were frightened by the occupational therapy detox centers.
The preliminary draft of the “parasite decree” caused mass protests, which experts call the most massive in Belarus since the time of perestroika.
