NEWS

    Recently in Swedish and Belarusian mass media the Swedish journalist Maria Soderberg published her article about the starvation to death of 24 000 pigs at the collective farm enterprise “Yuzhnoye”, which was followed by the demand of the NGOs from Pinsk to investigate the reasons of mass starvation of animals.  Now the administration of the enterprise is trying to hide the results of this tragedy and regards the situation at present to be stable.  

     The grave place situated on the territory of the enterprise, where hundreds of dead pigs have been thrown down for a year, can be recognized now only by ploughed not so long ago ground and numerous labels, usually hung on pigs’ ears, lying around.  Last week it was filled up with ground and fenced in. 

    But the inhabitants of the nearby village Vulka Gorodischenskaya said, that even two weeks ago some people continued to steal the carrion and to sell it in the city at a half reduced price.   This can be proved by the existence of recently abandoned small camp in the neighbor forest, which used to be the residence of the thieves. Though the administration of the enterprise regards this fact to be inconceivable, as according to their information the grave place was guarded.  One can judge about the quality of the guarding by the fact, that rather many journalists (including foreign ones) visited the grave place, making pictures without any problem, and no guard stopped them.  

     Not only workers of the enterprise, but the local villagers are not so eager to speak about the problems of the collective farm enterprise “Yuzhnoye”; as the majority of those people or their relatives are employed at the enterprise, so they are afraid to lose their jobs in case the administration learns about the fact that they spread the information around.

“People are afraid to speak out, because the administration is cutting down the staff, so everyone is afraid to lose his job, as it’s impossible to get employed elsewhere. The collective farms are closed down, everything is empty, no job at all”, - said the man from the local village, which refused to tell his name.

     For the last year the 400 workers staff of the enterprise was nearly half reduced. The director of the enterprise Ivan Gorbanov said, that the staff has not been cut, but people were dismissed mainly because of the working discipline breach.

     The workers, whose salary is 19 000 rouble, receive this money with a considerable delay. The majority of the employees at the enterprise are women – so on the eve of the International Women’s Day they received presents – two kilos of meet each. 

     Mr. Gorbanov, which had avoided meeting journalists before, that time officially confirmed, that 24 000 pigs starved to death at the enterprise. Now there are approximately 13 500 pigs at the enterprise, and after the order from the executive committee of the province additional fodder was delivered to the enterprise and the situation was regarded to be stable to Mr. Gorbanov’s mind – only 4-5 pigs die daily.      Though I saw the workers in the presence of their bosses throwing a couple of dozens of dead pigs from a special container into the lorry – they would be brought to the city of Beryoza for processing. If the director tells the truth, it happens, that it takes nearly a month to collect the necessary number of dead pigs for sending for the processing. But in this case this carrion is hardly valid for processing if stored at the natural temperature of the air. Local villagers said, that there are not more than 6 000 pigs at the enterprise, not 13 000. “Maybe there are 6 000 pigs, maybe less”.

     Meanwhile after the publications different kinds of commissions started to visit the enterprise “Yuzhnoye”.  The workers have never seen such an influx of officials – from local Office of the Public Prosecutor to the Ministry of Agriculture representatives. The guilty ones are being looked for.

     But the director of the enterprise considers, that one has to blame the nasty weather, as due to it in Belarus there was no possibility to provide the necessary quantity of fodder for animals.  

     It was interesting to learn, that even the director doesn’t know about the future of “Yuzhnoye”, as today the plan of the enterprise’s reconstruction is being made in Minsk, so its fate is decided there.   

Alyaksey Dzikavicki, Radio LIBERTY, Pinsk