Czech town hall dismisses criticism of its treatment of Romanies

The town hall had a sociological institute draw up an analysis focusing on the issue, Rapkova said.

The analysis has confirmed that the town hall's steps were correct and it will continue with them, Rapkova said.

"The conclusions of the renowned sociological institute of Daniel Hanzl show that the town hall should continue with the adopted trend of a balanced approach to unadaptable citizens. Along with social programmes, it should apply distraints and reprisals," Rapkova said.

She said the town hall's strategy was efficient as prostitution had fallen by up to 80 percent and arrears in payment were cut by over 1.5 million crowns.

Rapkova said when the report for Human Rights Minister Michael Kocab was being drafted, no one had asked the town hall for comments or documents.

"We only learnt about the report after it was passed for comments to ministers," Rapkova said.

"As a result, I have asked heads of the town hall departments to voice a position on the report. They have formulated 39 points explaining that the report was untrue," she added.

Rapkova said the approval of the report on excluded localities was a continuation of the struggle between the state and town halls.

"No one from the government, including Kocab, has inspected the problematic localities in Chomutov," Rapkova said.

"A number of mayors and town halls have supported our effort," she added.

Rapkova said drugs, exorbitant debts and gambling contributed to the difficult situations of the people from the excluded localities.

"Not the evil town hall, as claimed by Kocab," she added.

Due to the mismanaged privatisation of the housing stock, some 90 percent of the owed rent cannot be recovered, the report for Kocab said.

A number of people are threatened with prostitution and individual households are "devastatingly" threatened by crime committed by about four local clans that have divided the town among themselves, the report said.

The Chomutov town hall does not sufficiently use the opportunities to pay some welfare benefits to the needy people to which they are entitled. This mainly relates to the contributions to livelihood and to housing for socially disadvantaged people, it added.

The report said the Chomutov town hall not only exacted the debts from debtors in an ineffectual way, but they were also deprived of substantial amounts of money by distrainers. They collect ten times more for arrears in payment of a few hundreds or thousands of crowns.

On August 25, the Chomutov town hall started seizing the property of people, mainly Romanies, who owed high sums to the town in unpaid fines and fees for municipal services.

The town hall stopped using the services of hired distraint officers. Instead, the employees of the town hall's economic section, with the police assistance, seize money and movable property from debtors who received social allowances,

According to the town hall, Chomutov registers about 4000 debtors owing it over 240 million crowns in rents, fines and other fees.

The distraints are part of the "Life Ring" project in protection of decent people against unadaptable inhabitants, drug-addicts and prostitutes. Apart from distraints, these people face also relocation to mobile Portakabins on the outskirts of the town.

The project has sparked off fierce opposition from Kocab's office as well as some human rights activists.

($1=17.262 crowns)

Autor: ČTK
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