Why do young people choose the countryside to live and work?

Hotel and tourist complex, House of Culture, FAP, art school, well-paid job and your own cottage. What the village of the future in Belarus looks like, the journalists of "7 Days" found out after visiting two agricultural towns of the Pruzhany district - Klepachi and Zhuravlinoe.

The fact that from Klepachi to Belovezhskaya Pushcha is within easy reach is reminiscent of herds of bison that roam the nearby forests and fields. On the central square there is a steel installation of the bison family. The agro-town got prettier in 2005-2010, which passed under the sign of the revival of the village.

At the end of summer , ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO visited Klepachi, where the central one is located. He got acquainted with the new equipment for the agricultural sector, praised the villagers for their work, tried locally produced rapeseed oil and noted: "It does not taste bitter!" And then, having met with the labor collective of the farm, he told how the five-year plan for the construction of agro-towns began during the years of the implementation of the State Program for the Revival and Development of the Village. Then the HEAD of the NATIONAL BANK, Petr Prokopovich, was given an order: to start from a small homeland! And he fulfilled: Klepachi, Kozly, Mokroe and other villages of Pruzhany were renewed. There were also two agro-towns - Klepachi and Zhuravlinoe.

- 400 individual houses were built, they were popularly called presidential, - recalls Zinaida Usik, deputy DIRECTOR of Zhuravlinoe OJSC, who was engaged in settling cottage development along Parkovaya and Molodezhnaya streets. - Then there were almost no working women among the new settlers - all were on maternity leave. Residential development went in parallel with the introduction of dairy complexes. Today, there are more than 17,000 heads of cattle at all MTCs of Zhuravliny. The company delivers more MILK per day than any other district! 43 thousand heads are grown at the pig farm. So there is a place to work in Zhuravlin.

Reclamation of the 70s - the time of the first heyday of Klepachi. Where today is the central square of the agro-town, they began to lay canals, drain swamps and uproot bushes. And in 1972, an order was issued to establish the Sovietsky state farm.

- The first streets with two-level apartments that appeared during the period of reclamation of Belarusian lands, and today - the decoration of the agro-town, - says Zinaida Usik. Houses with outlandish for that hour two-level apartments along the streets of 60 years of the BSSR and Lesnaya were modernized and updated. The landscaping of their yard area is nearing completion, taking into account parking spaces for cars that almost every family has. On the street 60 years of the BSSR - a shopping center with a cafe and a butcher's shop with local products. The cafe has the level of a good restaurant. Even the inhabitants of Pruzhany hold family celebrations here. In addition, in Klepachi there are two consumer cooperation stores and a retail outlet. There is also a kindergarten, an outpatient clinic and a school. In the educational institution, which was modernized during the years of the Rural Revival Program, they were waiting for us. School director Irina Rybakova noted that their school is not much inferior to the city. They even have their own swimming pool - with 25 m lanes. Children with special needs go there in the evenings for free. Also, 10-time free access to the pool is due to the leaders in the collection of waste paper. Adults can swim in the evenings and on weekends. The pool of the school in the agricultural town of Zhuravlinoe works in a similar way.

- Klepachi is a place to live. Everything is within walking distance. In addition to our educational institution, there is a children's art school in the agro-town. Teachers compete to see who can captivate the children the most,” Irina Rybakova emphasized in the conversation.

The average age of Zhuravlinoy's employees is 40 years. We visited one of his MTK, where it is prestigious and profitable to work. For example, Alina Karpyza used to work as a physical education teacher, but, having learned that the farm needs livestock specialists, she took a referral and went to get a profession in demand at the Grodno Agrarian University. Today she runs the MTK, and her husband works as a machine operator at Zhuravlin. They asked Alina: is it true that young people do not go to milkmaids?

- In our MTK, the entire team is young, - she answered. - The eldest of the operators is 34 years old. One of our employees will soon become a mother, and for the third time!

Not so long ago, a new couple was formed here: a gynecologist Denis Kaduka and a veterinarian Vlada Novichkova. Denis is from Pruzhany, Vlada is from Rogachev, she came to work at MTK after studying at Pinsk College. The guys could have moved into their own apartment a long time ago, but they decided to wait for the cottage: the opportunity to live in the house of the farm with a further right to buy it out is a more attractive prospect.

In the Brest region, 222 settlements have been transformed into agro-towns in accordance with the State Program for the Revival and Development of the Village for 2005-2010.

- We adhere to the Consolidated Action Plan for the Arrangement of Agricultural Towns and Promising Rural Settlements of the Brest Region for 2021-2025, - said Anatoly Shchuplenkov, Chairman of the Agriculture and Food Committee of the Brest Regional Executive Committee.

The plan provides for the implementation of a number of tasks in the industrial and social spheres. In 2021, more than Br65 million was allocated for these purposes in 105 rural settlements of the region. A number of housing stock and engineering infrastructure facilities were built and repaired for these funds, several educational, healthcare and social and cultural institutions were renovated. In addition, industrial facilities were built and repaired in agro-towns with the support of the region.

The work on the construction of water deironing stations was activated. This year, a station was launched in the agro-town of Stepanki, Zhabinka district. In the region, four more are planned to be commissioned by the end of 2022. It is also planned to commission a number of artesian wells.

There are many young people on the Klepchansky section of the Kommunalnik CUPP, which serves the communications of the gasified town. Recently, tractor driver Maxim Stasyuk joined the team. He bought a house in Klepachi, moved there with his wife and three children.

- Now it is difficult to allocate land in Klepachi and Zhuravlin for construction. After all, we live and work near the National Park. Nevertheless, the prospect of obtaining housing for young professionals is always there. Now there are two land plots for construction: one is already under approval, the second is for the future, - says Olga Grishkevich, chairman of the Mokrovskiy village council, in whose department Klepachi and Zhuravlinoe are in charge.

Now in the village of Mokroe, opposite the village council, a new house for specialists is being built. Nearby is the hotel and tourist complex "Nikolaevsky", owned by the farm. Traditionally, in the summer, children's sports teams from RUSSIA, who train at the arena of the Pruzhany Ice Palace, rent rooms here. So residents find income not only on local farms, a feed mill, a pig farm, in housing and communal services, but also in the tourism business.

In the center of the agricultural town of Klepachi is the best House of Culture in the area. Open to villagers every day.

- We want young people to be active. After all, among them there are many talented, purposeful - real nuggets, - said Alexander Momlik, head of the department for ideological work and youth affairs of the Pruzhany district executive committee. - Every year we hold various competitions for young families of the region, such as "Lord of the Village", for the best large family, for the best farmstead. The guys from our agro-towns have become its winners more than once.

Tamara MARKINA,

newspaper "7 days".