Slovak government should pay more attention to Romanies-NGOs

Two Slovak non-governmental organisations, the Institute of Romany Public Policy and the Milan Simecka Foundation, today called on the government to pay more attention to Slovak Romanies’ problems. The NGOs pointed out that the government promised to do so in its policy statement.

The government of Robert Fico (Smer-Social Democracy) took over in mid-2006, replacing its right-wing predecessor.

"We want to stress that we are witnesses to a sort of passivity on the part of the government and of an indifferent approach to the individual measures that are envisioned in the policy statement," Laco Oravec from the Milan Simecka Foundation said at a press conference.

To mark one year of the government in power, the NGOs have drafted a report in which they assessed the fulfilment by the government of individual steps concerning the Romany community that it included in its policy statement.

According to the report authors, employment, housing and education are the areas that need the utmost attention.

However, representatives of the Romany public policy institute said today that although they were not yet satisfied with the government measures they understood that the government still has the entire election term ahead of it to implement its plans.

They said they intended to draft a general analysis of the fulfilment of the government policy statement’s declarations concerning the Romany problems.
According to official statistics, less than 90,000 people in the 5-million Slovakia have declared themselves Romanies.
However, unofficial sources say the number of Romanies in Slovakia is many times higher.

According to the government’s estimates from 2005, there are 360,000 of Romanies in Slovakia.