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People should be required to care for elderly parents or pay to state, Lukashenka says

Alyaksandr Lukashenka suggested on Thursday that people should be required to care for their elderly parents or pay to the state for performing this function.

While visiting a rest home near Minsk, Mr. Lukashenka said that such a requirement could be introduced in the first half of this year.

Accompanied by his eight-year-old son Kolya, Mr. Lukashenka promised that the government would continue doing its utmost to secure decent living standards for the elderly.

Mr. Lukashenka said that lonely old people living in rural areas were offered free stay in hospitals during winter. "We feed them, supply them with clothes," the presidential press office quoted him as saying.

Raising the subject of World War II, Mr. Lukashenka said that a new, "pompous" WWII museum would be built in Minsk to highlight the Belarusian people's contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Mr. Lukashenka reiterated that Western Europe should be grateful to Belarus instead of criticizing it. "We, Belarusians, are reproached regularly. You stop doing that because you have not yet repaid us for what we did for you in the years of the Great Patriotic War. You live thanks to the fact that many of our people died," he said, apparently addressing the European Union.

The rest home's residents presented Mr. Lukashenka with a painting and an embroidery and told him to have more rest. "We need you. As long as you are the leader, we are absolutely sure that there is care of us, old people," a resident was quoted as saying. //BelaPAN