The Need to Ensure Control Over Minors

The time for vacations and summer holidays has arrived. During this period, parents need to pay special attention to how minors spend their time, as they may face various dangers.

For instance, there are dangerous bodies of water, quarries, beaches, abandoned buildings, construction sites, water towers, wells, and landfills in the district that attract the attention of children and teenagers.

The banks of water bodies, as a rule, have dangerous slopes, approaches to water bodies are overgrown with reed grass and shrubs, and abandoned buildings pose a danger due to their dilapidated state. Therefore, during the summer, parents need to strengthen control over children to avoid accidents.

For example, in the past period of 2017, a young child drowned in an artificial reservoir located in the village of Gankovichi in the Beshenkovichi district, a two-year-old boy drowned in a melioration canal in the Drogichin district, and a 13-year-old boy drowned in the Berezinsky district while playing on the bank of the Berezina River (he fell from a rope attached to a tree branch over the water).

Furthermore, night streets can pose a danger to minors.

The state, primarily concerned with the safety of minors, has established a time limit for minors under 16 to be outside their homes without adult supervision between twenty-three hundred and six hundred hours. Failure by parents or their legal guardians to comply with the escorting obligations entails administrative liability in accordance with Article 17.13 of the Code of the Republic of Belarus on Administrative Offenses.

To a greater extent, children's safety depends on the responsible attitude of the adults around them.

Assistant Prosecutor
of Beshenkovichi District
2nd Class Lawyer
E.L. Potapenkova