Not only political repressions make Belarusians think about leaving the country. There are more and more labor migrants who are dissatisfied with the level of income at home.
Even according to official data, the number of people who quit in Belarusian organizations in 2021 significantly exceeds the number of those who found a job. According to the National Statistical Committee, in January-July of this year – excluding small businesses – Belarusian enterprises employed more than 361 thousand people, and over the same period more than 411 thousand were fired.
Even in 2020, which is considered a crisis year due to the pandemic and the post-election situation in the country, there were more people employed in Belarus. At the same time, now many vacancies remain unclaimed for a long time.
Physicians in short supply
The situation in the medical field looks especially indicative. For example, in the vacancy bank of the state employment service in the Brest region, as of September 1, there were more than 500 offers for doctors and almost the same number for nurses and paramedics.
According to the head of the health department of the Brest regional executive committee, Viktor Mikhalovsky, there are not enough doctors of narrow specialization in the region – ophthalmologists, otolaryngologists, oncologists, infectious disease specialists, surgeons. The most acute shortage of dentists is felt – with the need for one hundred specialists, only ten are distributed to the Brest region.
Medical officials do not associate the shortage of personnel in this area with the level of wages, believing that it is fully consistent with the current economic situation in the country. However, not all medical professionals agree with this opinion.
The salary of doctors is not satisfied
Ekaterina works in one of the children’s polyclinics in Brest and says that even many doctors working full-time now have a salary that does not always exceed 1,000 Belarusian rubles (about 330 euros in recalculation).
“To get more, you have to either take on an additional load, or earn extra money in private medical centers – but not everyone succeeds,” says Ekaterina.
She believes that this is why her colleagues began to look for options for employment abroad, while in Brest itself about 90 doctors are currently required.
Portrait of Lukashenka with a submachine gun hanged in the Palace of Independence
“My friends most often choose neighboring Poland: even at first, a doctor there can receive three times more than in Belarus, and then everything depends on the level of qualifications,” Ekaterina clarifies.
She herself does not plan to go abroad for family reasons yet, but she does not exclude that she will take such a step in the future if the situation in Belarusian medicine does not improve.
Leave and not return
Representatives of other professions are increasingly thinking about the prospects of employment outside Belarus, among which drivers, builders and highly qualified workers stand out.
A resident of Brest, Evgeny, has the specialty of an electric and gas welder, but in recent years he worked in his hometown as a minibus taxi driver, because they paid more there. In the fall of 2020, Eugene received an offer to find a job in his main specialty in a private company in the Lithuanian city of Mazeikiai and now he does not regret anything.
“I now earn much more than at home, although by Belarusian standards I was also considered a highly paid worker in Brest,” the DW interlocutor shared. At the same time, he added that he had never been interested in politics before and even rarely went to elections.
But, having been on vacation in Belarus and seeing what the situation is, he admits that before he could not even imagine that such things would happen in the country: “Some atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, lack of prospects.” If earlier, according to Eugene, he intended to return to his homeland after some time, now he is seriously considering the issue of moving his family to Lithuania.
What labor migration is fraught with
Experts also draw attention to what the staff drain from Belarus threatens due to the political crisis and economic uncertainty due to the sanctions imposed by the West. As economist Andrei Levko notes, by the end of 2021 Belarus may fall to the last place in Europe in terms of income.
“The average salary of a Belarusian five years ago significantly exceeded similar indicators in Ukraine and Moldova, but now these countries are almost equal to us in terms of income, and the rest of Belarus’s neighbors have gone far ahead,” says Levko.
According to him, few people in the country trust the data of official statistics, which declares an average salary of 1,400 Belarusian rubles (about 470 euros).
In fact, in many regional centers and in rural areas, even half the income is considered decent earnings today.
Even in the pre-sanction times, the situation in the Belarusian economy was assessed by experts rather restrainedly against the background of the lack of reforms and the predominance of state-owned enterprises, many of which generate losses and rely on help from the budget.
Now, not only political repressions, but also tightening the screws in business, together with the destruction of private initiative, can, in the opinion of observers, become an additional incentive for labor migration. This will only aggravate the situation both in the real sector and in the budgetary sphere, where there are still enough problems.
A source: Russian service DW
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