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.