The other day I got acquainted with man whose attitude to life, work, people stuck me pleasingly. His name is Abduhafiz, he told how he had become a farmer, what had proceeded it. All his story which began since early years of his labouring activity was permeated with the idea of the good which should be done in behalf of those people who surround you directly. It was just that encounter which a recurrent time made me take a pen and share my meditations with you, dear readers, I want to remind you once more about that universal truth that the honest way of life never had an alternative and will never have had it.
"Pay taxes and have a peaceful sleep,"- calls the well-known advertisement on "Russia" telechannel. The thing I like best of all in this advertisement is an estimation of man's state. People who are never embroiled with the law live much more in peace than those who deal with the criminal affairs having a property of million estimates and a big number of bodyguards. An honest man is esteemed even by the criminal world. But the image of a decent, honest, reliable person can be gained only if you are a law-abiding citizen. The attempts to evade state taxes by means of concealing your incomes, falsification of papers will bring you no peace.
Let us imagine that space my acquaintance Abduhafiz Rajabov labours in. I don't mean his land plots where field jobs are bound to begin soon; I want to speak about the auto roads where he serves passengers for the period of land rest. By the way, I must say that Abduhafiz had GAZ-#1 vehicle and a license giving him a right to transport passengers. In order to legalize his activity he spent less that fifty somoni. He regularly pays a monthly tax and works peacefully. There are cases when he is stopped by auto inspectors but the latters can't find any faults with him. Abduhafiz's car is always in apple-pie order. He works basically on the interurban trunkline. He doesn't take big money from clients, these fees are only a little bit more that in a bus, and on their way back passengers sometimes pay according to the same tariff which exists for social interurban transport.
"We should be guided with out conscience, - says Abduhafiz. - Sometimes one conveys reverend old people, women with children free of charge. God sees everything; he will pay me back for all I try to do for people. The sum I earn is quite enough to live worthily. I don't need more".
Keeping in mind Abduhafiz's words it is interesting to watch the behaviour of private taxi-drivers whose number is growing from day to day and who grasp every opportunity to make a passenger pay through the nose changing a tariff for one and the same distance several times in respect to a situation. They work illegally not only by themselves, sometimes they stimulate a diffusion of bribery; the latter having become an ordinary phenomenon among the officers of state auto inspection (SAI). For them, just as for militiamen regulating transport, morality is a minor thing. The major thing is money.
All of us know that the country had been sustaining uneasy times. All of us have families where there are children. We all have to live. Sometimes we hardly make both ends meet. Therefore some of us try to find loopholes in the law, to deceive the state, to fleece another fellow. Having fleeced the latter we allow to fleece ourselves. We know that we don't abide by the law and when we are objected we have nothing to say in response. And the only thing we have to do is to pay off. And a bribe is the best device in such case. We ourselves get things turn such way that in the outcome they bring us to a deadblock. Meanwhile the state fisc goes on losing revenues, which are needed for a repair of the same roads.
If I decided to share with you on the issue of passenger conveyance I must draw your attention to the fact that monthly the state fisc is deprived of hundreds of thousands of somoni over the republic caused by the concealment of incomes on the part of the enterprises dealing with autotransport. It happens because registration and control of transportation and monetary turnover are absent completely in this branch. Still nothing new is made up instead of the tickets, which were given to a passenger for the fees paid, this system existed long ago. But now a driver has everything under his thumb. He takes as many passengers as he likes, the sum of money passed to the cash is also to his own discretion. We put up with this situation when a regular work of social transport was the problem of primary importance. But the new times have come. And now we must think also about service, observance of laws. How long should we be living under lawlessness suffering from it, first and foremost, ourselves?