29 November 2002
Farmers in Brest region paid back wages in kind

 State-run farms in the Brest region, in the southwest of Belarus, repay their long-overdue wage arrears to farmers in kind through local stores.
Twenty-three farms in the Pinsk district owe their personnel a total of 1.3 billion rubels ($684,000) in August's, July's, and June's wages. Seven farms in the neighboring Luninets district owe their workers 1.7
billion, or $895,000. To fulfil the government's order to clear wage debts before December, farms have been concluding offset deals with local stores to pay their workers with food and non-food products.
Locals have used their chance to snap up all available household equipment and furniture from the stores. Over the last ten days, the Pinsk district consumer society distributed more than 200 million rubels worth of merchandize to farmers. November's "sales" are expected to
amount to 540 million rubels, or $284,000, and an even higher figure is projected for December.