Authorities in the Hrodna region have identified 20 to 30 workers who are to be sent to the army because of poor performance during the harvest campaign. The announcement was made to journalists by Hrodna Regional Executive Committee Chairman Yury Karayeu.
“The head of state proposed a scheme during the nationwide conference call: those who do not want to work properly and steal material resources during the harvest campaign. What resources are allocated for the harvest? Primarily diesel fuel, gasoline, crop protection products, and, regardless of the harvest, animal feed. These people should not be sent to prison but should instead have their combat training and combat readiness improved a little, as the defense minister said.
We have gathered two or three dozen such people. As I joke, we have enough for a platoon. These are the people who failed to understand that everyone is working for the harvest and decided instead to profit from it or solve some of their own problems. Thieves of what used to be called socialist property, the people’s wealth.
All of us here are doing everything possible, as they say. Some are going without sleep, some are delivering spare parts, some combine harvester operators are ready to work from early morning until late at night, while others decided to profit from it,” Karayeu said.
According to Karayeu, some of those found responsible will be sent to the border with Ukraine, while others will perform unpaid work laying railway sleepers or building roads.
“Together with military enlistment offices and the police, acting on requests from district executive committee chairpersons and enterprise directors, we gathered these people from across the region. Not too many, so as not to affect the harvest campaign. We will see which of them is fit for what.
If there are those who are fit to carry weapons—and what they did was not too serious—they will train with weapons, as the president said, closer to the southern border. The rest will be sent to what are called defense-related works. We no longer have construction battalions in the country, but we do have engineering units. Carrying railway sleepers, digging, laying rails or building roads without weapons will be the most useful thing for them. That way they can compare what it is like to live without pay, under army conditions, perhaps in a tent or in the forest.
Then they will return and tell the others that it is better to work in agriculture. So we already have one platoon from across the region preparing for this,” Karayeu said.
Earlier, Aliaksandr Lukashenka ordered that people who perform poorly during the harvest campaign be sent to the army. According to Presidential Administration Head Dzmitry Krutoi, such training deployments will last for two to three months.
