Slovakia preps isolated Roma for switch to euro
Slovakia, which adopts the euro in six months, is putting its money where its mouth is with a drive to help its long-neglected gypsy minority with the switch to the official EU currency.
The Slovak Central Bank teamed up with a Roma theatre troupe to devise an upbeat show that took to the stage this week in Saca-Kosice, a suburb of Slovakia’s far-flung second city in the country’s east.
At 400,000, Slovakia’s gypsies or Roma represent seven percent of the population with many living in isolated ghettos, often without roads, running water, sewerage or electricity and where poverty is rampant.
"Most of those of working age are jobless and have a very limited education," said Central Bank spokeswoman Jana Kovacova. They require "special attention because they are at one and the same time a minority and a socially excluded group".
Violins struck up as dancers from the Romathan theatre — a state-funded group founded in the 1990s to safeguard Roma culture — swept on stage in a blaze of colour with their main prop, a Slovak crown-to-euro currency converter.
