Belarus President Alyaksandr Lukashenka ordered to restore the average salary to $500 in the Belarusian ruble equivalent.
“We should not pay unearned money. In no way. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in the situation we had two years ago. We must stimulate and encourage heads of private and state-owned enterprises so that we could come closer to this $500 level,” Lukashenka urged.
According to him , wage hike will be resonable only on condition of the growth in labor productivity.
It was as far back as 2012 when top officials touched the question of the longed-for $500 salary. At that, Nadzeya Yermakova, the then Head of the National Bank, stressed that ‘the wage must be earned’ and called on Belarusians to work more and better.
At the present time, the most dramatic situation has come about in the field of education. A it follows from the National Statistics Committee’s reports, monthly wages of 29.4% of education workers amount to 300 rubles ($155). Moreover, such figure is only on the payroll: their take-home salaries are less. At the same time, almost 40% of social and healthcare workers earn less than 400 rubles per month ($205).
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Over the first seven months of the year, the average salary amounted to 706 Belarusian rubles.
