Owners of solaria demand that Council of Ministers should give reply about licenses

The Ministries regulating the work of solaria look at their services and activities in different ways. The Ministry of Healthcare insists on the fact that solaria’s activities are medical services and that they should get the corresponding license.  According to other laws, solaria’s activities are athletic and health-improving. Suntan consumers do not care about licenses. Their brown skin is the most important thing and that’s it.
Entrepreneurs consider the attempt to present artificial suntan services as medical services a way of exercising pressure on private practice in Belarus. The Ministry of Healthcare explains it by its care about the health of the population.

ERB has decided to find out whether a medical license was necessary to render the artificial suntan services. Will the services be rendered only by doctors?

It has turned out, that neither owners of solaria not employees of ministries can answer the question.

“A legal entity should have a medical worker of any qualification with a certificate of any courses of physical therapy. A specialist working in a solarium should have medical education”, - said the head of the licensing department of the Ministry of Healthcare Svyatlana Hancharyk to ERB.

The deputy director of the business department of the Belarusian Ministry of Economy Yauhenii Syamyonau says that the license is required according to the legal acts adopted by the Ministry of Healthcare because solaria’s services are announced to be medical:

“The services are termed physical therapy according to a decree of the Ministry of Healthcare. They are considered to be medical activities and should be licensed”.

However, Yauhenii Syamyonau confessed to ERB that the legal act of the Ministry of Healthcare contradicted the presidential decree and the classifier of economic activities. They have not been brought in correspondence with each other yet:

“The existing legal acts have not been brought in correspondence with the acts adopted by the Ministry of Healthcare. There are some discrepancies about it.

According to the classifier of economic activities, solaria’s services are considered to be athletic and health-improving and should not be licensed according to presidential decree #17”.

They have been trying to bring the acts in correspondence for five years. Meanwhile, solaria decide whether to get a license themselves. Employees of some of them are sure that there is no need for medical education.

A solarium in Minsk: “We have not heard about it, and there is no need to have medical education… What is medical education for at a solarium?”

It turns out that half of Belarusian solaria have their licenses and the other half don’t. At the same time average consumers of artificial suntan do not care about it. Their brown skin is the most important thing for them and it does not depend on the medical education of employees:

Alena: “I have never thought that some solaria could work without a license… I thought that all solaria in the city had licenses. I have never even asked them about it. I like the result, my brown skin. And the service… it is not intricate, you just press the button and get your suntan”.

The mishmash still exists and owners of solaria demand that the authorities should deal with the problem and consider the issue in the Council of Ministers.