Protest to the nowhere: how a small business is going through the quarantine in the province

“There were so many hairdressing salons and funeral procession bureaus in the county town N* that it seemed that the residents of the town were born only to shave, cut their hair, refresh their heads with a veil and die immediately. But in fact, people were born in county town N, shaved and died quite rarely. The life of the city was the quiet... "

Lyudmila Butuzova

The county town of Livny, Oryol Oblast, was not much different from the one described in the novel “12 Chairs”, until the coronavirus got here and covered a couple of thousand entrepreneurs with a copper basin. Actually, there are much more of them in the 47,000th town, but a significant part of them work at system-forming enterprises such as Livgidromash and Prompribor, which, according to the epidemic, rod like tanks off-road, but trade and services have only recently merchantly sweeping, bends on the sidelines. Everything is closed: the market, shops, hairdressers, sewing workshops, shoe repair, communication salons, stalls with underpants and tents with flowers ...

- There is nowhere to buy a pencil! - amazed the founder of the newspaper "Uyezdny Gorod" Elena Bogdanova. “I have never seen such a desert in my entire life.”

Restrictive measures that came with coronavirus are to blame. Residents were locked up in houses for self-isolation, only gypsum busts of the heroes of Lieven are grouped with impunity on the alleys. Last Thursday, small businesses decided to correct this injustice. The long-worn businessmen in a crowd moved to their jobs in the central city market.

At the closed gate, according to the publication of Bogdanova, hundreds of people gathered. They came there to sign a collective letter to the city leadership and ask questions about paying taxes, insurance premiums and how to pay employees salaries. The main request is to compensate them for losses and open the market for trade in products.

According to the chairman of the Lebanese Association of Entrepreneurs Viktor Yerofeyev, people are in poverty. 100 entrepreneurs and 200 sellers were engaged in products in the local market, 500 people traded in industrial goods. As Erofeev stated, in fact, they are already ruined. The butchers’s meat goes out - there’s nowhere to sell, the haberdashery brought in spring clothes, but the season is over, no one will buy it.

The organizers were most afraid that what was happening did not look like a rally. People were simply invited to sign the letter and did not expect so many to come, Viktor Yerofeyev told reporters. Further events developed as follows. The crowd, heated to the limit, began to search for the extreme in their troubles and for some reason found only the governor of the Oryol region, Andrei Klychkov. Immediately, an initiative arose to appeal to the regional council with a request for his resignation. The "county town" promptly replicated the initiative, but literally a couple of hours later it disappeared from the site along with the initiators scattered in different directions. Representatives of the Oryol Oblast prosecutor’s office arrived in Livny. Formally - to verify compliance with the rights of entrepreneurs renting trading places on the municipal market - informally - you yourself know why. The rebels took refuge in places of their voluntary self-isolation, moreover, along with phones that now either don’t answer at all, or with the voice of an answering machine they warn you “You haven’t gotten there. For violation of the isolation regime, theoretically, everyone faces a fine, or even worse: if the authorities are very offended, then the market will not open to Carrotkin at all.

The "county town" remained in sight, so the prosecutor’s first visited the editor-in-chief Elena Bogdanova.

“They found an arsonist,” Elena says. - Only I didn’t set fire to anyone, but told everything as it was. But, to be honest, I myself did not understand why our business was attached to Klychkov? Is it his fault that someone’s meat is not sold?

By the way, those who have sat in the bushes quite actively go over to the side of the governor and are sparing less rotten meat, provided, of course, that their names will not be mentioned in the press.

“Who prevented them from organizing delivery or online trading,” says Galina V., an interlocutor of “Novye Izvestia” about the injured meat and fish products traders. “Pyaterochka”, they see, is in the way, it works, but they don’t. Used to be kings ... People who sit on small things, or like me, on children's shoes, are a hundred times worse, but we tolerate ...

Earlier, a similar scandal erupted in the central market of Orel. Entrepreneurs did not agree to pay rent during a downtime, albeit reduced by 50%. The governor took control of the situation. The regional government literally dug up the earth so as not to lose people and to obtain additional benefits for them. Something, it seems, happened, although in Orel the market is private and it’s not so easy to reduce the owner’s appetites to zero.

“Livni, who considered themselves cooler than Orel all their lives, decided to go ahead and force the governor to open our market under the threat of resignation,” another source dug in the bushes told NI. - I said: guys, put up reasonable requirements. "Top" in no way: how much can you endure? Our incomes have fallen, the government is not itching. I understand: they don’t fill the egg, but they covered themselves with those who suck their paws. The result still did not lead to anything: until the “crown” is over, everyone will have to endure.

In fairness, local authorities can help entrepreneurs endure. The Liven market is in municipal ownership, so the city administration canceled the rent for retail outlets with a flick of the wrist and without waiting for a command from above. Until the fall, small businesses postponed tax payments and mandatory fees. It is important: local officials cover their eyes when someone is really unbearable to sit without money, and in violation of prohibitive measures, he goes out to give a little naughty. In general, they try not to quarrel with entrepreneurs - with all due respect to the giants of the Lebanese industry, the city budget for a third consists of taxes on small and medium-sized businesses.

So told "NI" anonymous sources, praising the loyal Lebanese authorities. Against the backdrop of localistic populism, the governor Klychkov is clearly losing, so the Libyans are not at all sorry to “dismiss” him. He is a usurper in Oryol. Not later than yesterday, he closed the impudently opened Kari shoe store and told the Orlovites live that materials on the suspension of activities had already been sent to the court. True, the principal portal Oreltayms immediately reported that the Orlovites had been complaining to the governor for a week about the illegal work of Kari. To many, this seemed unfair: why only entrepreneurs can, but "we can not." Well, now justice has been restored, everyone sat down exactly under severe quarantine bans. In which case the punishment will be lightning fast - will any enterprise be slammed in one day or did you seek another?

The entire regional beauty industry with fear two months ago went underground. The people walk unshaven, unshaven and it is possible that by the end of the pandemic they will grow up with moss, and hairdressers do not protrude.

Speaker of the Regional Council Leonid Muzalevsky, who became indistinguishable from his voters by shaggyness, at the April meeting of the parliament stood up for beauty and made a proposal "on the possible removal of restrictions on the work of hairdressers." According to Muzalevsky, many masters switched to an illegal mode of operation, continue to provide services at home, and this process is of a "bad" mass nature. “Perhaps, by tightening security rules, to legalize the work of such institutions? Indeed, other regions have already taken such a decision, ”the speaker addressed the governor.

Andrey Klychkov was skeptical about the proposal. “Go out into the street, look at the attitude of people, they don’t need hairdressers during a pandemic,” the governor summed up, and, it seems, have made enemies forever among workers in beauty salons, spas and other beauty industry establishments.

Svetlana Petrova, the head of the Association of Beauty Specialists of the Oryol Region, could say that she challenged Andrei Klychkov to a duel and also, on the air, parried: “The attitude to our industry is incomprehensible, it seems like we do not need anyone, but it seems like everyone uses us.” People sitting near the TVs began to look at the governor’s hair, which did not deteriorate at all during the two months of the epidemic, but became even better. The chat exploded in suspicion, the Orlovites began to write that not only the governor, but also his first deputy, and the second and third looked unusually beautiful, "just don’t need to tell everyone that Klychkov’s wife was cutting everyone with ordinary household scissors." (It was the case, Klychkov somehow inadvertently "burned" his wife). The governor's adviser Sergey Lezhnev rushed to the rescue: he himself in the technical premises of the administration in his spare time from the councils of everyone who needs to shave, cut, color and, as you see, it turns out like a pro.

Pavlova did not accept the joke of humor.

“We understand that it is difficult for the governor to make decisions,” she complained to the Eagle Times reporters. “But there is experience from neighboring regions where the beauty industry operates in a limited mode.” And we have nothing ... The employees were given minimal support measures. Now the question is where to get money for salaries for April: no income, no money, no support, here I really do not know what to do. There are 40 people working in my beauty center ... I can’t keep track of everyone, but I won’t be surprised if any of them take them at home. Officially, all are closed. All 500 salons. On average, in each of 5-6 masters, a total of 3,000 people. I continue to talk about problems, to call on the authorities to reason. We wrote a petition, collected signatures among entrepreneurs. The governor refers to the "difficult situation" in the country.

Workers are angry, she says. And here in vain! In the Oryol region, an “action plan for the development of the economy in the worsening situation due to the spread of the coronavirus” has been approved. The plan includes items on providing citizens with essential goods; activities aimed at supporting employment in the region; measures of social support for the population; supporting industries at risk. They did not include all the suffering, but some were lucky. The sewing cluster received a state order for tailoring masks. They gathered everyone who is able to hold the needle and at least once in his life saw what a sewing machine looks like. Oryol oblast rushed and in a week became one of the Russian leaders in daily production of masks. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, 157,775 products are sewn daily in Orel! The news is great. Moreover, the governor Klychkov promised that these masks will be distributed on the streets for free. Big and small cities of Oryol Oblast sent gratitude in advance.

But as always, every coin has a flip side. Representatives of the sewing cluster cry with tears and do not know how to assess the scale of the absurdity that happened to them. “People who sewed these masks from morning till night, not thinking about the self-isolation regime and risking their health, getting to enterprises by public transport, cannot get money for their work. Claims are presented to their direct leadership, which is also still in the cold. Owners of enterprises, having received a task from the governor to sew masks, invested a lot of money in materials - fabrics and accessories - from their own pockets, of course. But the regional administration is not in a hurry to pay for masks. The cluster has sent off 3 million pieces for a total of 87 million rubles. Received only 11.7 million rubles. 41 enterprises and 600 seamstresses were involved. Workers demand payment, a huge scandal erupts. Today we urgently need feedback from the governor, ”the entrepreneurs said, transparently hinting that hungry seamstresses were no worse than the Lebanese merchants and even tomorrow they would“ send the governor to resign. ”

Poor Klychkov, with this troubled people, he has absolutely no time to get down to business - extorting money from the center.

To stabilize the economy of the Oryol region, affected by the coronavirus, 5.1 billion rubles are needed. The need for additional funds from the federal budget is 4.6 billion. More than 736 million additional federal funding is needed to support SMEs. Another 330 million rubles. will be required to replenish the shortfall in revenues of the regional budget. It is this amount that is planned to be spent on a deferment in the payment of rental payments for tenants of state or municipal property, and for lowering tax rates on the simplified tax system for affected industries. By the way, these include the owners of shopping centers, who gave installments to tenants.

Somewhere among the money promised by the Center, the seamstresses, hairdressers, individual entrepreneurs and simply hungry people were lost...