Czech Gov't prepares instruction manual for municipalities on how to address the problems of ghettos

Cities and municipalities will be receiving instructions from the Czech Government on how to proceed with solving problems in so-called socially excluded localities and what instruments to use. The instructions concern crime prevention, education, employment and social services.

After meeting with mayors who have ghettos on their territories, Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka and Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier (both Social Democrats) announced the news to journalists on 13 October. "A sort of recipe book has been produced that will now be given to the municipalities. Thanks to this material, they have an overview of all the subsidy programs," Sobotka said.

The instruction manual features contributions from the Education Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Labor Ministry, the Regional Development Ministry and the Human Rights Minister. In his view the result is an "offer of coordinated solutions" in crime prevention, education, employment and social services.

The Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion is planning a project that will involve 70 towns. Dienstbier said the towns involved could receive up to CZK 10 billion altogether from EU funds for their local projects.

Other money could also flow to the cities that have chosen to go their own way and want to address their difficulties on their own without the Agency, the minister said. The PM said he has spoken with mayors about the creation of a new subsidy program from which town halls might finance the demolition of shabby buildings.

By mid-2016 the country’s law on social housing should have been completed. A legal norm is also being drafted to establish the rules for social enterprises.

A recent analysis produced for the Czech Labor Ministry has demonstrated that the number of impoverished apartment complexes, neighborhoods and streets in the Czech Republic is rising. Since 2006 their number has doubled and is currently more than 600.

As many as 115 000 people live in such places toady compared to 80 000 people nine years ago. The authors of the analysis said they consider any locale where at least 20 people are living in deprivation to be an excluded locality.

These people are dependent up on welfare, are under-educated and unemployed, are in debt and have other problems. There are such ghettos in 297 cities and municipalities.

The analysis found that local authorities and property owners are behind the development of more than one third of the excluded locales in the Czech Republic. These ghettos arise as a result of the orchestrated removal of people from certain neighborhoods or parts of a community.