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Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion ends work in Chomutov and Duchcov

22 October 2012
3 minute read

Members of the Monitoring Committee of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion in Romani Localities decided at their meeting last Thursday to end the Agency’s collaboration with the towns of Chomutov and Duchcov. “The main reason we are ending the collaboration in Duchcov is the fact that all 10 of the main planned measures to support social inclusion were rejected at the town councilors’ November meeting. That de facto makes it impossible for the Agency to perform any meaningful activity there,” Agency director Martin Šimáček explained.

“We did not succeed in finding a compromise solution for the planned privatization of buildings in the localities of Jižní Duchcov and Viktorina, which we have warned the town leadership not to undertake. If the buildings are privatized, the town will lose its capacity to influence the composition of the tenants of those buildings. It will also lose a tool for working with socially deprived families who have a great deal of potential for improving their situation,” Šimáček said.

Disagreement between the town leadership and representatives of the Agency began shortly after the town announced its intention to privatize the properties. The Agency repeated warned the town leadership that the families residing in the buildings are residents who have met their financial responsibilities to the town for the most part and who could be successfully included into education and the labor market if given the right support. Moreover, the town does not have enough apartments available for these families in the first place, and privatizing the buildings will not increase their housing capacity. Should the new owners raise rents or refuse to extend existing leases, it could force the families to leave the apartments. Representatives of the Agency have therefore done their best to propose several compromise solutions instead of privatization, but the town leadership rejected them all.

At the December meeting of the town council, the rejection of alternatives to the privatization was accompanied by the rejection of other proposals which the Agency was planning to implement in the town with its partners. Those proposals included the opening of a drop-in facility for children and youth aged 15-26, the provision of social activation services for families with children, reinforcing field social work and debt counseling, creating a transparent employment system for all citizens in Duchcov, building a transparent housing system, creating conditions for the launch of social enterprises, increasing the capacity of nursery schools, and reducing the number of gambling machines and video lottery terminals on the town’s territory by 50 %.

The Agency has been working in Duchcov since August 2011, when it established a Local Partnership there. The town had applied to the tender for new localities to work with the Agency that same year.

As for the town of Chomutov, Šimáček had this to say: “While the town of Chomutov has publicly declared its interest in collaborating with the Agency, in reality it does not want to take responsibility for implementing concrete integration measures. The town’s lack of will is apparent specifically in its constant delay of the adoption of a strategic plan for social inclusion, which has not been approved by the town councilors for any of the 10 localities in the town where the Agency has been working since 2010.”

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