MEP Peter Pollák joins Slovak Permanent Crisis Team to address COVID-19 in Romani localities

MEP Peter Pollák (OĽaNO), the former Slovak Government Plenipotentiary for Romani Communities, will be augmenting Slovakia’s Permanent Crisis Team in association with combating COVID-19. Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovič (OĽaNO) informed the TASR press agency of the news ahead of Wednesday’s cabinet session.

“Along with another person, he will dedicate himself especially to the situation, the predictions and the risks in marginalized Romani communities,” Matovič said of Pollák’s main role on the team. The PM admitted that the state will have to adopt measures in the Romani settlements to arrange for the kind of standards for personal hygiene that will minimize the risk of infection spreading within those environments and beyond them, without sparking panic or giving the impression that it is essential to use the security forces there.

In an interview for TA3 television, Pollák said the Army is no solution. “Discipline and responsibility are the solution,” he said.

“Any potential quarantine is not about ethnicity, if the uncontrollable spread of this infection happens in any particular territory, the approach to it is essentially clear and predetermined irrespective of who is living there,” Pollák said during the interview. The Permanent Crisis Team is, according to the Slovak PM, an advisory body to the PM and should formally involve the Secretariat of the Central Crisis Team.