Czech association raising awareness among Romani tenants about hazards

The Konexe association is holding its third Romani community meeting on Tuesday 12 March at 13:00 CET on the corner of Prostřední and Řeháčkova streets in the Předlice quarter of Ústí nad Labem. The program of the meeting will cover the overall fate of Předlice, a discussion of options for resolving the situation there, which buildings are hazardous and the risks they present for their occupants and to inhabitants of the quarter in general.

After the death last year of a woman who was buried under the collapsed walls of one building, a structural engineer determined that another roughly 30 buildings in the quarter have structural flaws. Ústí nad Labem is facing a big problem which it has yet to address: What to do with the people currently at risk in those buildings.

A first batch of people were forced to move out of Předlice last year under humiliating circumstances, first into a gym and then into a residential hotel. They were threatened with their children being institutionalized unless they complied. The town hall reached out to them about only one thing, suggesting that they move to residential hotels in other towns in the region, such as Děčín.

"This is the third such public meeting to take place on Prostřední street during what is a tense time for Předlice. For the first time we have invited representatives of the majority-society institutions and offered them a unique opportunity to open up a dialogue between those institutions and the local community about resolving the current crisis in Předlice, which is part of their purview," Míra Brož of Konexe told news server Romea.cz.

The most recent meeting of the Předlice inhabitants on this topic took place on Saturday, 9 March. A video of that event filmed by the Konexe association is available (in Czech only) at http://www.romea.cz/cz/zpravodajstvi/domaci/sdruzeni-konexe-burcuje-predlicke-romy-domy-v-nichz-ziji-nejsou-bezpecne.