Belarusian authorities have forbidden activists of the Belarusian Radio and Electronic Workers' Union (REP) to hold pickets on the International Children's Day. In spite of it, on June 1 union activists plan to express their protest against cancellation of privileges for pupils and students and children under 3 and call the public to struggle for the return of the privileges.

"We've submitted 24 applications and received just the same number of refusals," Leonid Sudalenko, law inspector of the REP Trade Union for the Gomel Region, told the website www.praca-by.info. "Our pickets were prohibited because the applicants had failed to conclude onerous contracts with bodies of the medical first-aid service and sanitary services.

The Trade Union views the authorities' refusals as a gross infringement of the constitutional right of citizens to hold peaceful demonstrations and express their opinions.

"It is inadmissible to charge public activists who want to express their attitude to the events underway in the country with this sort of restriction, in particular, oblige them to pay millions under the above contracts," Mr Sudalenko has explained and added, that the Trade Union does not exclude an appeal against illegal bureaucrats' actions at the Gomel City Executive Committee.

The union activist said that during the latest 6 years the city authorities of Gomel have banned over 100 actions applied for by democratic organizations.

However, despite the authorities' prohibitions, trade-union activists are going to disseminate information on June 1 on how the cancelling of privileges for pupils and children has affected family budgets of ordinary Belarusian citizens, how the problem is addressed in neighbouring countries, and how much money is spent, at the same time, on construction and maintenance of numerous ice palaces.

These plans were reported by Gennady Fedynich, Chairman of the REP Trade Union: "We are ready to go even further. If citizens support us, we are ready to go through the necessary procedure, required for moving forward legislative initiative, and demand from legislators to return privileges to children. In 2009, 35 percent of families with three children were recognized as needy. This is the data of the official statistics, which, as we all know, is far from reality.

Let us remind you that on June 14, 2007, President Lukashenko signed the Law "On State Social Privileges, Rights and Guarantees for Separate Categories of Citizens".

The Law cancelled a lot of privileges, including those that had existed for students and pupils and for children under the age of 3.

In particular, the Law cancelled free-of-charge medicines for children under 3 (except for children-invalids).

Children and other dependents of the perished or deceased citizens, who receive their breadwinner's loss, were deprived of free-of-charge medicines and prosthetic dentistry services.

Children of school age and students lost the public transport privileges.