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ONE MORE STEP IN POVERTY REDUCTION One of such workshops was held on 9 July in Brest. It was attended by officials from the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, the Ministry of Statistics and Analysis, UNDP Project Coordinator and the project staff. The workshop brought together more than 50 participants — representatives of local executive and administrative authorities including heads of labor and social protection departments of the district executive committees, heads of the respective units of the Brest administrations and directors of the territorial centers for social services. The participants of the Brest workshop discussed all aspects of household poverty. Poverty profile and social and demographic characteristics of the Belarusian poor were described. Elena Kolos, First Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Protection informed the participants about collaboration of the government agencies of all levels in addressing poverty as well as about poverty reduction efforts of the central authorities in the recent years. — Until recently we have tended to interpret the poverty problem as the low income status of an individual or a household, — said Ms Kolos. — To a certain extent it was fairly appropriate at the previous stage. Within the framework of the UNDP project we will talk about other poverty dimensions. We will try to analyze the problem by looking at income and opportunity dimensions of poverty. What is meant by this? Some fee–based services which are currently introduced in education and health sectors have the right to exist, but at the same time the adequate social policy and proper attention from the part of the government should be in place… Lyudmila Istomina, UNDP Project Coordinator,briefed the participants about the key focuses of the UNDP Program activities in Belarus, the objectives and tasks of the project «Assistance in Elaboration of the Basic Foundation for a National Poverty Reduction Strategy in Belarus». We would like to remind to the readers of the UN Bulletin that the project was launched in May 2003 and is expected to last three years. The project is intended to analyze poverty problems in Belarus, to study and adapt best practices of the neighboring countries, to develop recommendations on key pillars of poverty reduction strategy and etc. It is expected to draft and to forward to the Belarusian government a comprehensive report on the key focus areas and programs for poverty reduction and the ways of improving the household living standards. — We would like to avoid mistakes of other countries caused by excessively declarative poverty reduction strategies, lack of properly defined objectives and clear quantitative and time framework benchmarks, — said Lyudmila Istomina. — We advocate for a well–designed and professional approach and we do hope that by 2006, when the project is completed, we will have a detailed action plan allowing to make decisions both at the central government and regional levels. UNDP Project Coordinator also pointed out that the project name is formulated as «poverty reduction», not as «combating poverty». «I think this has a symbolic meaning. Belarus is a civilized country and the final product of the project is a development strategy rather than survival strategy», — said Lyudmila Istomina. She also stressed that the project had helped Belarus to conduct a series of unique first ever surveys, for example, «Survey of the Time Budget of the Belarusian Households». Natalya Yefremenko, UNDP Project Manager, presented a brief summary of foreign experience in formulating poverty reduction strategies. Yevgeny Kasperovich, Head of the Central Department for Comprehensive Analysis and Coordination of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection made a presentation «Key Focuses of the Belarusian Social Policy in Poverty Reduction» with an emphasis on the household basic incomes policy improvements. At the end of the workshop the participants discussed the approaches to the development of the National Poverty Reduction Strategy and involvement of the relevant government agencies, local self–governance authorities and nongovernmental organizations in this process. Representatives of local executive and administrative authorities used an opportunity to ask questions to the ministerial officials and to get competent answers.
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