Two laws on the monopoly of the Post Office on the delivery of pensions and more

A skirmish at the plenary session of the State Duma on Tuesday, March 14, was arranged by Alexander Khinshtein, Chairman of the Information Policy Committee, and Valery Gartung, Chairman of the Committee for the Development of Competition. For each, the outcome of the wordy battle was a matter of honor, valor and glory.

The ability to force yourself to listen brings deep satisfaction and develops dependence on the microphone. The subject of the dispute was a couple of laws adopted in the third reading on the transfer of the Russian Post monopoly on the delivery of pensions – “On Amendments to the Federal Law” On Postal Communications “and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation and” On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Postal Communications” “and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation”.

Who is right, I did not understand, both said equally convincingly completely opposite things.

Khinshtein made no secret of his goal to support the state enterprise. Hartung defended the pensioners and argued that shipping rates would rise back from 1.17% to 4%. Khinshtein claimed that four percent never existed. Both used the verb “rub” and acted nervously. The Russian Post deliverers have a salary of eight thousand, and alternative workers have twenty thousand.

From the side it is difficult to understand what the participants in the dispute share. Most pensioners receive their pension on a card. The problem is with people with limited mobility in a sparsely populated area, where post offices were closed in the heat of reform. How pensions are delivered there remains unclear. Walking with other people’s money through the forest is a dubious pleasure. The salary of postmen has always been a frivolous income. In non-Soviet times, the development of technical means of control unexpectedly opened up the possibility of bullying low-paid state employees serving the population with limited mobility. The topic is heavy and unpopular, it is dangerous to raise it in parliament.

On the morning of the same day, the delivery of pensions through the mail was discussed in the Federation Council committee on social policy, and there they told the representative of the Russian Post directly in the face that they could not cope.

At the same time, in the budget committee of the Federation Council, a representative of Sberbank boasted of artificial intelligence and, among other things, spoke about an agreement with retail chains to issue cash. The bank pays a commission to networks for this, in my opinion, the scheme was invented for criminogenic areas where it is problematic to install ATMs.

Everything in the world is connected, and people with criminal motivation are the first to benefit from technological progress. Legislators are taking urgent patching action. The draft law “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On the National Payment System” adopted in the first reading was strangely tied to the topic of the delivery of pensions.

According to the annotation to the draft law, it is proposed to establish the obligation of the money transfer operator serving the payer to return the amount of money transfer to the client – an individual, or increase the balance of electronic money in full if the operator has received information from the Bank of Russia from the database data on transfer attempts without the consent of the client.

The bill was introduced by Anatoly Aksakov, Chairman of the Financial Market Committee. According to him, the bank is obliged to block the transfer for two days if the recipient’s account is listed in the database of fraudsters. In the event of a transfer to such an account, the bank is obliged to return the money. If the client insists on the transfer, the money cannot be returned. The bill is aimed not only at protecting payers from fraudsters, but also at eliminating the problems of conscientious recipients.

Communist Party deputy Mikhail Matveev said that banks are abusing blocking.

“For example, I have a practice when a woman, a disabled person of group I, issued a power of attorney to her son to manage her accounts in Sberbank, including Sberbank Online. Sberbank Online has blocked access to your personal account. Accordingly, all payments, utility and other, flew off, and, despite the presence of a notarized power of attorney, in which it is written in black and white that with the function of not just access, but, as it were, unlocking, opening a personal account, closing a personal account, Sberbank refuses, that is, for this, it only requires that the woman personally, not walking, therefore, be brought to the branch of Sberbank with a passport, so that she personally unblocks her office, ”said deputy Matveev.

Aksakov repeated that according to this law, one can insist on a transfer, but it will no longer be possible to return it.

Thus, the artificial intelligence of Sberbank will not help humanity. These days there was another shock in the financial market. The United States, with great love for itself, built a system of preferences for its IT with a system of stock coefficients and its own Silicon Valley bank. And they themselves banged it all out of thoughtlessness. It follows from this that there will be more fraud outside the United States.

As they say, we live a long time.

Deputy Aksakov is not to blame here. He is so competent and consistent in regulating the banking market that they tried to remove him altogether, and then they gave him the topic. Banking, stock, financial and other markets, including pharmaceuticals, are as dependent on global regulation as the media.

In the medicinal topic, Aksakov’s analogue is a member of the health committee, Alexander Petrov. The draft law, adopted in the first reading, seemed simple. The document is called “On Amendments to the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses.” It establishes responsibility for violation of the rules for dispensing medicinal products subject to subject-quantitative accounting.

Administrative responsibility for non-prescription sale of psychotropic drugs is introduced. Pharmaceutical workers will be fined ten thousand for this. The Committee on State Building and Legislation was determined to be responsible. After the vote, Alexander Petrov said: “I also voted “for”, of course, but I would like to see the Committee on Health Protection be further involved in this bill, to work, as a co-executor of the Health Protection Committee, and this is justified, because we are talking about very subtle matter – medicines for medical use in civil circulation, I did not say it so widely for nothing, and moreover, subject to subject-quantitative accounting.

Dear colleagues, so that lawyers don’t take you too far, this is a psychotropic group, a narcotic group, a strong one, and precursors – four categories. Of these, we consider that without a prescription we will punish only those drugs that are from this group. All other drugs, and these are large categories, there are several thousand of them, even if they are sold without a prescription “…

End of quote.

According to MP Petrov, this is a very small category of medicines and you can buy any prescription on the Internet for a hundred rubles. From the outside, everything seems easy, if you grab the question of their context. Immersion in the topic leads to a feeling of complete hopelessness.

Lev MOSKOVKIN.

Photo by Sergey Kiselyov / Moskva agency