Ministers get salary increase
In a July 2005 interview with the Moscow-based television company TVC, Lukashenka said that the Belarusian ministers were paid $800 per month and additionally granted a quarterly assistance for medical treatment. The European Radio for Belarus explores if their salaries have changed and whether the medical care packages can be called a benefit after the abolition of social privileges.
Belarus’s deputy economy minister Andrei Tur says his salary has increased since 2005 but was unable to name it exactly.
“I get approximately Br2mn-2,5mn ($1250)", he said.
Regarding the assistance for medical care, officials have not received it for almost one year. Being a benefit, it has been cancelled, according to the deputy minister.
Andrei Tur: We don’t have it now. Objectively, when there were small salaries, this medical assistance was a necessary way (of assisting). It is not there any more. I think this is right, because it was somewhat a privilege. It has disappeared, because the pay has been raised.
Aliaksandr Tsimashenka, the spokesman for Belarus’s Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski, declined to reveal the salary of his boss.
“I never poke my nose in someone else’s pocket. I don’t know the salary of the prime minister”, he said.
He would not reveal his own salary, either. But he said that he received the medical-care assistance when going for vacations last year.
Tsimashenka does not know how much exactly he received and does not consider it a preference.
Halina Trafimava, a spokesperson for Labor and Social Security Minister Uladzimir Patupchyk, could not name the exact amount of the minister’s salary, either. She just said that it was close to $1000. Regarding the medical care packages, all of the staff at the ministry gets it annually; not quarterly as the president had said.
By no means is this a privilege, she stressed.
Vital Navitski who speaks for Belarus’s Emergencies Minister, Enver Baryiev, says it would not be politically correct to talk about the minister’s salary. He would not even elaborate on whether it differed much from the amount mentioned by the president. He admits that the ministry’s staff gets annual medical care assistance. This is not a privilege, he says:
“We do have a material assistance for medical care in the system of the Emergencies Ministry. It is paid once a year. But one should not regard it as a benefit”.
Belarus MPs enjoy almost a similar status as the ministers do. It means their salaries and assistance packages should be close to the ones of ministers. Syarhey Haydukevich did not hide to reveal his MP salary to the European Radio for Belarus for January 2008.
“If I am not mistaken, I received Br2,750,000”, he said.
The lawmaker maintains that each of fellow MPs is entitled to the medical care money equal to the amount of the salary. One just needs to apply.
Haydukevich: Once a year, when going for a leave, MPs get extra cash for medical rehabilitation. It matches their monthly salary.
MP Syarhey Kastsyan confirms his salary has grown since 2005. To how much?
“I will not say that. It’s not ethical to poke nose into people’s pockets. Like the other budget funded servants, we see our salary growing. But, apart from the usual leave packages, we don’t get any additional benefits”, he said.
Ministry officials and MPs describe themselves as ordinary budget-funded beneficiaries. Yet, their salaries differ greatly from those of ordinary teachers, doctors and alike. According to the Ministry of Statistics, Br463.7K is an average salary across the country (Br582.2K in 2006; Br795K in 2007). An average salary has grown 58 percent over the past two years. Top officials received $800 in 2005 against $1300 today, a 60-percent increase. It is almost the same. But public servants get 3.5 times more than the rest of the budget-funded desperate servants in the field.
