Authorities Avoid and Ignore the Roma
“Poverty is the greatest problem of the Roma. Because of that, people live in conditions of insufficient hygiene. The children don’t go to school because of the lack of possibilities to maintain basic hygiene, and the lack of money to buy school equipment and textbooks”, says Supanj Semsi, President of the “Neretva” Association of Roma from Mostar.
“Also, we don’t have a single computer, so, if we want to check e-mail we have to go to an internet cafe. The information we need for our work we get usually from Fadil Sisirak from the Behar Organization. Only several days ago, we finally managed to solve the problem of offices, which we got from Behar organization from Mostar.” What types of projects are usually implemented by Neretva? At the moment, we don’t have any concrete projects that we work on. Recently we worked to get the Roma children registered in the Officialy Registries. Actually, we discovered about a dozen of families in Mostar area that didn’t register their children with the Official Birth Registry. Do you cooperate with other NGOs from Mostar? ”Having in mind that we do belong to the Mostar Referent Group, we have the support of several organizations from the Group, primarily from Behar. Also, we cooperate a lot with OSCE, mostly to use their influence and help in reaching the local authorities, so that we could get some project or assistance. Does it mean, then, that you have insufficient cooperation with the local authorities? That is correct. The government doesn’t care about our problems and our communication remains at a very low level. Several month ago we applied to the City Council with one project, and we haven’t received any response yet. We also have problems scheduling a meeting with them. They promise to meet with us, and then we have to wait for months. When we call by phone, we can’t reach the persons in charge. They are always unreachable “at this moment” or on a vacation. For instance, we tried to solve the problem of one Roma family whose house burned down in a fire. However, we didn’t get to the municipal authorities to even try and find some accommodation for a family of 13. Which sources your organization used to finance the activities? To be honest, we don’t know ourselves how we manage with the finances. All the changes we implemented recently in the Statute of our association we paid for ourselves. Before the New Year’s Holidays, we organized a Roma folklore concert. We tried to find some sponsors, but we failed and had to finance the whole event from our own funds. What are the Association’s plans for the future? We plan to work on the improvement of the financial situation of the Roma population. Also, we will continue trying to establish better cooperation with the local authorities. Before the war, the City communal enterprise employed almost exclusively Roma. Today, none of those Roma employees works there. Actually, we would like to do a lot of various things. If only we had the donors on our side. The Roma Association Neretva can be contacted at neretva_most@yahoo.com. |
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