£2.5m for Pembrokeshire County Council’s learning and future employment project

9:10am Sunday 21st March 2010

Education minister Leighton Andrews has announced a new £4.6million initiative aimed at helping young people from gypsy traveller communities into employment.

Pembrokeshire County Council’s learning and future employment project will receive £2.5m from the Convergence European Social Fund (ESF) through the Welsh Assembly.

Read More: http://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/5073282.Funding_helps_gypsy_travellers_into_work/

Police launch drive to recruit more gypsy officers

Gypsies and travellers are being recruited by Kent Police to ensure the force best represents the community it serves.

Officers believe that by giving jobs to people from the minority group they will be able to smooth what is often a rocky relationship between the two sides.

However, some are concerned the ‘tick-box’ targets could lower standards if vacancies are given to gypsies and travellers rather than the best candidates.

Earlier this year a report by the Association of Police Authorities (APA) suggested all forces should seek to recruit from under-represented groups.

Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas said this was something Kent Police fully supported.

He said: “We seek to recruit staff from as wide a background as possible and we welcome applicants from all ethnic backgrounds.

“To support us in this we have a Gipsy and Traveller Action Group, the members of which advise us on issues and who provide support in the recruitment of new personnel and the progression of existing personnel.

“We believe recruiting officers from a variety of ethnic groups enhances the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of those minority communities.”

The initiative has been backed by campaigners for travellers’ equality, including the Canterbury Gipsy Support Group, which provides diversity training to Kent Police.

Vice-chairman Joe Jones said it was important his people were given the same career opportunities as others, but admitted he did not think there would be a mad rush to sign up.

He said: “Gypsies and travellers are far from being policed in the real sense. The only time we meet is when our camps are being raided or when we are being made to move on.

“We are the most misunderstood group of people in the British Isles and nobody really cares about us, but by the police looking to recruit us it shows that we have finally arrived in society.

“Over the years the police have acted as piggy-in-the-middle between us and various other authorities and there are a lot of issues that need to be overcome before gypsies and travellers really start to go for jobs in the force, but it’s obviously something we would like to see more of.”

The recommendation by the APA to recruit more gypsies and travellers has been ridiculed by the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Campaign Against Political Correctness, both of whom fear standards of policing will go down if candidates are judged more on ethnic background than suitability for the job.

However, Kent Police Federation chairman Ian Pointon pointed out that all potential recruits have to pass the same entry exams to be considered for a job.

He said: “It could bring a better understanding of the ways and customs of travelling communities and help break down barriers between us.

“We’re all aware of notorious traveller sites but there are also ones many people don’t know exist that are peaceful and absolutely spotless, and where I’ve been able to sit down and have a nice cup of tea with the people who live there.

“As long as they meet the grade then I can see no reason why we shouldn’t seek to recruit more gypsies and travellers.”

Romania: Gypsies Celebrate Roma Day, Yet Fear Reigns

Written by Chuck Todaro
Thursday, 30 April 2009

April 8th marked the Twentieth International Roma Day since the Gypsies of Eastern Europe broke free of the communist’s amalgamated "national minority" status and began openly acknowledging their heritage. However, according to the US State Department 2007 Country Report on Human Rights, Romania, home to Europe’s largest Roma population, is the setting for some of the most pervasive societal violence and discrimination against Roma. "This day offers the press the chance to reverse the usual negative stereotypes," says Roma journalist Rudolf Moca during the ceremonies at the Apalina Public School in the Eastern Transylvania town of Reghin.

The day long celebration at Apalina begins in the school courtyard with speeches, the singing of the Roma National anthem Djelem Djelem, followed by a barefoot Roma dance performance, concluding with a skit portraying a confrontation between young Romani men being settled with a dance competition: the fastest dancer possessing the more complicated moves and greatest stamina exits the showdown with his head up and a woman under his arm.

Roma day has a special significance for the 4,000 Gypsies living along the two parallel roads at Apalina that bears the reputation as a den of thieves. "Whatever goes missing in town, I can guarantee you can find it at Apalina," comments Maria, a downtown barmaid.

"When I go on my jobs, my boss reminds me not to tell them that I am from Apalina, he says to say I’m from somewhere else, or else they wont have any work for me," says Dani Racz, who like many at the Roma of Apalina works the traditional trade of laying paving stones, a skill he learned from his father who learned from his father before him.

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Life with the Romanian gypsies for retired Hedingham teacher

Published Date: 03 March 2009

AFTER a long and demanding career teaching children from Romany and gypsy communities across Essex, you would expect Margaret Biddulph to take it easy once she retired.

But after a few months it was clear a comfortable life of coffee mornings in Castle Hedingham was not for her and she made a decision that would radically alter her life.

The grandmother put her house up for rent, packed a suitcase and jetted off to a far corner of Romania.

Mrs Biddulph, a 64-year-old divorcee, said: "I made lots of inquiries and found out about a gypsy community in Romania. In January, 2005, I decided to pack up and go. It was a just case of jumping into the unknown.

"It was quite a culture shock. Romania is a very poor country and the community I work with, who live on the edge of a village called Tileagd, experience tremendous prejudice and have become a convenient scapegoat for many of the problems blighting the country."

Mrs Biddulph, a committed Christian and member of the Sible Hedingham Baptist Church, now spends her days teaching people to read and write in their own unique language and how to live a more sustainable life through small business ventures.

"We have set up a craft programme where I buy hemp and linen for the women to stitch and embroider into bags and cushion covers," she said.

On her infrequent trips back to England she attempts to find outlets prepared to sell the products, with the proceeds being sent back directly to the community.

"It is hard for them to get jobs as the perception is they are nothing more than thieves. It's unfortunate but they have often been left with no choice but to steal to survive.

"Whatever time I have left working there my goal is to break this cycle through the craft project and education," she added.

Giving up her home and spending most of the year in a small house in Romania has resulted in an unusual lifestyle for a retiree.

She said: "It's quite strange really. When I come home I end up living out of a suitcase in spare rooms of various friends before flying back again.

"It means I keep my possessions to a minimum as well. I guess I've taken on a bit of a gypsy existence myself."

The programme Mrs Biddulph is working on is supported by the Smiles Foundation, a Christian organisation attempting to change lives in poorer countries.

The charity has already built a church and school in the village, which is open to both Romanians and gypsies in an attempt to bring the communities together.

She is appealing for any shops, museums, or tourist venues to step forward and start stocking the bags and cushion covers so the next phase of the project can go-ahead.

"I will happily meet or talk to anyone who is prepared to support this vital work.

"This is such a worthwhile project and will make a massive difference enabling the community to stand on their own feet and move forward," she added.

Anyone who wants to find out more about the Smiles Foundation should go to www.thesmilesfoundation.org

For more information on the products made by the gypsy community or to inquire about stocking the goods email m.rainbird@btinternet.com.

Geckos nursery becomes profitable business for gypsies

KARACHI: The worsening economy and the environmental degradation have forced several gypsy tribes of Sindh to leave their ancestral profession and move on to more profitable occupations.

These gypsies have been settled in the outskirts of the city for centuries and have started capturing snakes, lizards, geckos and other reptiles in order to earn their livelihood, thus, posing threats to the wildlife of the province.

A hatching nursery of leopard geckos with around 10,000 reptiles is being run in a small gypsy colony in Safora Goth, Gadap town. Though the gypsies running such nurseries have been living in the area for several years, when this scribe asked about their colony, no one was even aware of their existence.

Finally, we managed to find the place. It couldn’t be called a colony; sandwiched between the cemented walls of bungalows from three sides and opening on to the road, the small settlement seemed more like a zoo with many makeshift huts where dogs, donkeys and cocks were tied to the legs of charpais.

After arguing for over half an hour, Muhammad Juman, 36, agreed to take us inside the ‘zoo’. Every hut in this small congested settlement opened into the other. In the first hut, a donkey tied to a charpai welcomed us.

The nursery was a large straw roofed hut located in a corner of the settlement where wooden boxes covered with an iron net were kept. The legs of the boxes were resting in earthen bowls filled with water so that ants could not climb into the box.

Juman’s six-year-old son proudly opened the lid of a box to show us the reptiles. The boxes were filled with sand, cloth or dry grass and when most of the boxes were opened, small reptiles started crawling out.

The reptiles were geckos, scientifically known as the Eubleparis macularius and locally known as Hann Khann in Sindh and Cheeta Chhupkali in Urdu. They are also called leopard geckos as the color and designs on their body resembles that of a leopard.

Umer Jogi, the tribe chief said that his tribe had once been experts in snake charming. “We carried snakes in the cities where we played Murli or ben (a traditional musical instrument made of pumpkin mostly used by Jogis). The snakes danced on our music and that is how we earned or livelihood but after the economic crisis, people didn’t pay much to see our show and we couldn’t capture many snakes as the environmental degradation lessened their number. So most of the community members switched to this new profession of capturing these reptiles,” he said.

Juman said that though geckos are very poisonous, his community members are trained to catch them. He said that they sell these geckos to a contractor who then sells them to a laboratory in Islamabad where anti-snake venom (ASV) is manufactured. He revealed that they sell one gecko for Rs 50 that is later sold to the laboratory for Rs 80. In the nursery, Juman feeds small insects to these geckos and a female gecko lays two eggs each fortnight; the hatchling can reach normal size in four months. Answering a question, Juman said that keeping such dangerous reptiles at home is a big challenge but as he has nothing else to do and is an expert on reptiles he can’t switch to another profession.

Roma bear brunt of Hungary downturn

By Thomas Escritt in Miskolc, Hungary

Published: February 20 2009 02:00 Last updated: February 20 2009 02:00

When night falls in Hetes, a gypsy settlement on the edge of the northern Hungarian town of Ózd, the men take to the streets and mount a guard, arming themselves with all kinds of makeshift weapons, from clubs to kitchen knives.

"We're up all night," said Henrik Radics, his hands resting on a scythe. "If a car comes in, we stop it and find out what they're doing. If they're peaceful we let them go."

Mr Radics and his companions took matters into their own hands after a spate of incidents that culminated in a house being set ablaze and plans by Magyar Garda, a rightwing uniformed group that claims to protect ethnic Hungarians from "gypsy crime", to hold a recruitment rally in the city.

Ózd is typical of the towns of Borsod county: once a proud industrial centre with a giant steel plant, it has struggled since the fall of communism in 1989, with no employers emerging to create jobs on the scale of defunct socialist-era heavy industries.

But the economic downturn in central and eastern Europe has added new urgency to a problem of marginalisation that goes back decades. Surveys show Hungarians, like many of their neighbours in the region, nurture strong feelings of prejudice against gypsies. That means Roma stand to be hit first and hardest by rising unemployment, which stands at 14 per cent in Borsod county, with its high gypsy population, twice the national level. With the government's own forecasts predicting that the economy will contract by 2.7 per cent this year, unemployment is set to rise sharply.

"The matter has reached critical mass," said Peter Hack, a criminologist. "With the economic downturn, the traditional scapegoat hunt has happened. Since there are no immigrants in Hungary, the Roma are the target."

Zsolt Farkas, a gypsy in Miskolc, Hungary's third largest city and the county's capital, speaks for many when he says work is becoming impossible to find.

"I worked on an assembly line at Bosch, and then I installed shutters in houses, but now it's impossible to find a job. When . . . they see I'm a gypsy, they're no longer interested."

Last month the Movement for a Better Hungary, a far-right party, won 8 per cent in a district election in Budapest after campaigning on a slogan of "gypsy crime". Last week Albert Pasztor, police chief in Miskolc, attracted opprobrium and praise in equal measure when he told a press conference that "all the muggings" on a Miskolc council estate over the past two months had been committed by gypsies, adding: "Hungarian and gypsy culture can't live together." He was suspended on the orders of the justice minister but reinstated less than 24 hours later after a chorus of protest from senior police officers, a cross-party show of support from the city's local government and a 1,000-strong rally well attended by skinheads.

This week the gypsy panic reached hysteria when three professional handball players from Croatia, Romania and Serbia were stabbed in a nightclub, allegedly by a 30-strong gang of gypsies, in the western city of Vesz-prem. The Romanian, Marian Cozma, a rising star, died from his wounds.

In the wake of the murder, Ferenc Gyurcsany, the soc-ial-ist prime minister, promised to "act decisively" against violence, and the rightwing opposition party said the government's focus should be on catching criminals. "The number of serious crimes committed by people of gypsy origin is rising at an alarming pace," it said.

Janos Ladanyi, a -sociol-ogist, says that gypsies, deprived first by resettlement programmes in the 1970s of their traditional itinerant lifestyle and then by the deindustrialisation of the 1990s of the low-skilled jobs on which they depended, have turned to crime, both petty and organised.

"We now have a population that's lived completely outside society for 20 years. Every so often, somebody calls for a quick, simplistic solution, which leads to an outbreak of gypsy-related panic, except this time the economic crisis makes it more serious," he said.

This excluded group, which makes up six per cent of Hungary's population, is also the fastest growing.

"If we can't integrate them into the labour force, then the long-term stability of the fiscal system is in question," said Gordon Bajnai, the economics minister. A package of €2bn ($2.5bn, £1.8bn) to be ploughed into the construction industry is part of the answer, he says, creating the kind of low-skilled jobs this population needs.

Downturn hits Romania's tinkers

BBC News

Scrap metal was once a lucrative trade for Eastern European Gypsies but as Nick Thorpe reports, this has been devastated by the global economic crisis.
Melting snow has turned the unpaved roads of Zizin into streams of mud, ankle deep.

Wading through it, in search of drier ground, your ears grow accustomed quickly to the gentle murmur of the wintry village, dogs barking, cocks crowing, neighbours calling out to each other through hazel fences.

There are sharper sounds too, like the fireworks set off by children in far-off cities.

But there is no money for such frivolities in this predominantly Gypsy village.

The sounds are made by bull-whips, lengths of rope with horse-hair tied in knots at the end.

Scrap scarcity

Cracked incessantly by the kids at the end of streets, in the yards of houses, but above all on a small hill which overlooks the village.

Splitting the sky apart for a split-second, as though in the space created, poverty might be transformed into wealth, tin into gold.

Zizin - the name itself sounds like sheets of tin falling on tin. And that is how many of the Gypsies here made a living, until the global financial crisis struck.

Like millions of scrap-metal hunters and gatherers around the world, the Gypsies of eastern Europe did well from the tinkers' trade in recent years, as the price of metals soared.

A huge hunger for metal in the construction industries of India, and China in particular, fuelled the price rises. But that has all changed now.

Bridge stolen

Gypsies and non-Gypsies alike snapped up every scrap as it fell by the wayside, and today, it seems, there is little left for anyone to gather up.

As scrap became scarcer in recent years, the theft of metal became more common in eastern Europe and beyond.

One of the first Soviet locomotives in Ukraine, all 14 tonnes of it, and a metal bridge which connected a village in the west of the country to the outside world, were the most brazen thefts.

In Hungary, the re-opening of the Freedom Bridge over the Danube in Budapest, closed for many months for repairs, was postponed after thieves in eastern Hungary went off with hundreds of steel girders prepared for it.

The guttering and even the roofs of churches, and bronze plaques to Holocaust victims have all disappeared overnight.

And copper wire, used in railway signalling, was especially prized. Sixty three trains were disrupted in one day alone near Prague, when a length went missing between two main city stations.

Prices plummet

Both the Czech Republic and Hungary have now passed laws imposing strict controls on the operation of scrap metal yards. Hungary alone has 20,000.

Now everyone selling is obliged to record their identities, and full details of their loads.

But the new legislation may prove redundant. The economic downturn means people are not spending on scrap metal. Prices paid for it have fallen in some places by 90%.

From Zizin, Ion Ocelas, a father of five children with a sixth on the way, used to make the trip to the scrapyard in the nearest city, Brasov, almost daily.

Now he says it is hardly worth it. He used to get 33 euro cents (£0.29) for each kilogramme he brought in, now he is getting three cents.

Even if his horse-drawn wagon was piled high, he would only come back with a handful of small coins, less than a beggar might make for a day's pleading on the pavement outside the famous Black Church in Brasov.

"I'd like to work as a welder," he says, as he restacks the last of his metal collection - the twisted blue bonnet of a car, pots and pans, and something white and spiked, like the head of a metallic thistle - "but there's no work for welders round here, still less for Gypsy welders"

"People here have no time to think about the future," says Father Raia, an Orthodox priest of Gypsy origin, when I ask him what hope he sees. "They have to eat today."

At the main scrapyard in Brasov, buried deep in waste land beneath the girders of a new road, the manager refuses to talk.

But on the western outskirts of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, the owner of another yard, Ciprian Porumb, is happy to unburden his concerns.

Future fears

"I used to get the $450 (£300) a tonne for this," he waves his hand at a mountain of scrap, still being unloaded from lorries.

"That fell to about $150 (£100), but I dare to hope it will improve again soon."

As he speaks, a four-piece Gypsy street band, blasting on trombones and drums, marches boisterously by, serenading the ladies at the upstairs windows of the drab flats which overlook the scrapyard.

Back in Zizin, Ion's seven-year-old daughter, Rebecca, is feverish. The doctor has been called.

We leave the village as darkness falls, and an ambulance siren mixes with another orchestra of children crying, horses braying, dogs barking and always the whips, cracking in the frost.

Gypsies 'could fill county's job vacancies'

Thursday, January 15, 2009, 07:30

Romany gypsies from countries including Romania and Bulgaria could be invited to Lincolnshire to take jobs previously filled by Eastern Europeans.
Gypsies and travellers currently suffering from persecution in their countries of origin could be persuaded to flee their "squalor" and step into jobs left by Poles returning home.

In Lincolnshire they have predominantly filled jobs in agriculture.

Peter Robinson, portfolio holder for social cohesion at Lincolnshire County Council, told colleagues this week: "If, because of the downturn, we start to see fewer Eastern European migrant workers from Poland and so forth, it's my personal view we could get replacements from Romania and Bulgaria."
He said Lincolnshire could extend a friendly hand to them saying "come to us and get a better deal".

"The main problem of course, whether we like it or not, is that gypsies and travellers are extremely unpopular people to have in the county," he added.

Coun Robinson was speaking during a meeting of the council's local community development and partnerships policy development group, which held talks on a new pilot project to deliver extra housing-related support to gypsy and traveller communities already living here.

But in a written response issued via the council's press office after the meeting, Coun Robinson said it only "might be the case that gypsies and travellers could take up the jobs that Eastern European migrants used to hold".

For more on the welcoming hand Lincolnshire could offer to Romany gypsies, see Thursday's Echo.