Medic Ihar Pastnou is dismissed from work for criticizing the head of the Vitsebsk Region Executive Committee
Ihar Pastnou has been criticizing
Aliaksandr Kosinets for the waste of the budget means for a long time
already. It's not the first time Mr. Pastnou is fired: two years ago
he was fired from the position of a school doctor. As a result, he
had to find a harder job with a smaller wage.
However, he was
not allowed to work long enough even there. On 27 November Ihar
Pastnou was warned that his labor contract would not be extended. No
explanations were given.
“To my mind, this is an evident
violation of the labor rights. The law should be amended in order to
make the employer explain what is wrong with the employee. I was not
explained anything, which gives me grounds for the suspicion that I
know the main reason. I think this is the critique of the “ill
spots” of the Vitsebsk medicine – public critique, appeals to
state institutions and appearances in independent media,” commented
Mr. Pastnou.
The medic is sure that the state spends to little
money on medical objects: “When Aliaksandr Kosinets came to power,
I thought that he knew the needs of the Vitsebsk medicine well
enough. He is a professor, he worker in the government and was
responsible for the social protection. However, he started
window-dressing: squares, artificial lighting like every day is the
New Year, block pavement, ice palaces... At the same time, there is
no money for repairing the isolation hospital, the surgical building
of the oncological hospital remains unfinished, and he keeps on
shouting it is necessary to construct an ice palace in Orsha. I have
written about it everywhere, even to the Presidential Administration,
as I am sure that Aliaksandr Lukashenka would hardly bear such an
attitude if he knew about it. However, all my appeals are returned
from Minsk down to the region executive committee, to Kosinets. Can
we move everything with such a system?”
Short after
Pastnou's interview to the satellite channel “BelSat” he was
visited by “people in mufti” at his work, and some provocations
started against him in the Internet: somebody started posting
insults, using his name. Mr. Pastnou has not skills of computer use
at all, that's why his colleagues do not believe that such things
could be done by him.
At his present work the medic receives
about $210, having to travel around the villages and examine children
there. The villagers are satisfied with his work and promised to
collect signatures against his dismissal.