While discussing about the tragedy of the aeroplane crash which killed quite a few important Polish people, my Russian teacher and I started discussing about travelling. Apparently, the people in Karelia get 44 days of leave from work every year. The number increases for those living up north. People in Murmansk get up to 54 days!
And for the people living in the Karelian republic and work for the state (ie.Teachers at the university, doctors at state hospitals), the state pays for their vacation flight/train tickets! They get this benefit once every 2 years. So if you make a claim for your return flight tickets for 1 trip in 2008, the next time you can make a claim will be in 2010 for a trip made that year.
For train/ flight tickets to anywhere in Russia ,100% is paid for by the state. And you can claim up to a certain percentage from the state for train/flight tickets out of Russia.Cool!
We aren’t sure if that benefit extends to the rest of Russia though. But that’s lot of administrative work to be done and does create more jobs for the accountants. I wonder if they have state auditors. There can potentially be a lot of money swindled off if no one is there to check! They can perhaps make life so much easier for everyone by just doing away with this benefit and just paying people higher salaries. But if that is the case, so many accountants, cashiers and people doing the administrative work will lose their jobs.
Perhaps efficiency is not the best solution for Russia after all.
