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Scientists continue to leave Belarus for better-funded jobs abroad, official says

Increasingly more Belarusian researchers are abandoning the country for better-funded jobs abroad, Syarhey Kilin, chief scientific secretary of the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences (BNAS), said at a news conference held in Minsk on Thursday.

“The pay that young professionals receive is not quite good, and we understand this,” he said.

At the same time, Dr. Kilin said that scientists working in research areas that might lead to a commercially viable product in demand abroad had good chances of receiving “sufficient” pay.

Young researchers who are paid some two million rubels ($250) a month in the first few years of their career can shift their focus to such areas, he said.

Dr. Kilin acknowledged that the average age of those holding the title of Academician had "gone over the top” but said that 29 percent of the overall personnel of the BNAS were aged below 33 years. “The academy is young,” he said.

Aleh Ivashkevich, pro-rector of Belarusian State University, said that all restrictions on fees paid to ad hoc teams of researchers under contracts with customers using non-budgetary funds had been removed, referring to Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s April 2 edict. Scientific organizations are free to conclude commercial contracts and pay the staff as much as they want, he stressed. //BelaPAN