Seasonal Workers: The Only Source of Income Is Trade in Scrap Iron and Fruit

OSI's Roma Health and Health Media projects collaborated with the Center for Independent Journalism, based in Bucharest, Romania, to support journalists investigating access to health care for Roma. The articles, including the following, bring to light the need to improve the quality of health care for Roma and explore the systems that create unequal access. Below is an English translation; the original article in Romanian is available on the Center for Independent Journalism website.

Slobozia Bradului is the third largest community of declared Roma in Romania. It is situated 40 kilometers away from Focsani and it is made up of six villages: Slobozia, Cornetu, Liesti, Valea Beciului, Coroteni, and Olareni, all of them mostly inhabited by Roma. Officially, the community is registered with a population of 5,800 of which 3,850 are Roma, but in actuality, the Roma population is closer to 5,000 out of a total population of 7,000 people. Even though they represent more than 70 percent of the population, the Roma in Slobozia Bradului lead a precarious life. More than half of them do not have medical insurance, and all of them depend exclusively on the trade in scrap iron and fruit for their livelihood. Work in Slobozia Bradului is seasonal, and the community uses 700 Dacia pickup trucks to transport scrap iron. The Roma here work only in spring, summer, and autumn; in winter they sell their cars to feed their children. Yet, some are well-organized hard workers, and they live comfortably off their trade and have well-maintained houses. Apart from the often illegal trade in scrap iron, the Roma in Slobozia Bradului also trade in fruit.

Record Number of Births and a New Clinic Without a Gynecologist

According to the data supplied by the County Authority for Public Health, Slobozia Bradului has a record number of births—170 a year—compared to the rest of the communities in the county, where the birthrate is two or three babies a year. “The population in Slobozia Bradului has an exceedingly high demographic potential. There we have the highest birthrate in the entire county. For example, in 2006, the birthrate in this community was 32.8 per thousand compared to an infantile mortality rate of 11.4 per thousand, resulting in the tripling of the population each year. I suppose this is due also to the fact that the local population is very young,” said Dr. Alin Lazea, counselor in the Department of Assistance for Mother and Child within the County Authority for Public Health.

The data from the last census shows that the community’s population has increased by 800 persons over the last four years. This is because 70 percent of the Roma in Slobozia Bradului are Pentecostals, forbidden by their religion to use contraceptive methods of any kind. Not only does their religion forbid women from using contraceptives, but so do their husbands. “I cannot take injections or pills to stop having babies because he beats me. He knows when I’m having my ... menstruation and if it’s late by one day, he has me checked immediately,” says Saftica Manea about her husband.

In the Population Registry in Slobozia Bradului there are 1,200 children entries or “hurdori” as the Roma call them. Every month, there are 90 pregnant women to be looked after in Slobozia Bradului, and as many babies and birthing women, yet there is only one family doctor to take care of all of them with the minimal tools of general practice. Moreover, Dr. Maria Parvana is only at the clinic a few hours a day, three days a week; she spends her other two work days at the Health Insurance House filling out the patients’ files. Other than that, the Roma in Slobozia Bradului get medical treatment where they can. But the people say they are very happy with their doctor who offers care without discriminatory treatment in other clinics outside the village. Dr. Parvana unofficially attends to more than 6,000 persons, compared with the two doctors in Tamboiesti, the neighboring community, who both have fewer than 3,000 patients. According to Dr. Parvana:

We have around 80 consultations a day because the population is very large. I treat all of them with equal care. I go to the places of the people who cannot come to me to look after them. There is a problem with the welfare system because a large number of them don’t have a labor contract, but we try to help all to benefit from free medical services as much as possible. I get along well with them and I only do what I can.

Dr. Parvana is given due credit by her superiors in the Authority for Public Health (APH). “The doctor in Slobozia Bradului is overwhelmed by the huge amount of work because she has very many patients and she is the only doctor in the community. There are around 6,000 registered persons and it is hard to imagine how she copes with it,” said Dr. Lazea from APH. Previously, the clinic in Slobozia Bradului operated in a dirty building which the state returned to its private owner two months ago. After they were removed from the building, the doctor and the three nurses were moved to a small room in the town hall, where the agricultural office operates. The doctor and the nurses meet with Roma patients among crowded stacks of recipes kept in the office. But it is much better than the former clinic where dampness permeated and the only treatment patients received was words of kindness.

In order to assist the doctor and the nurses, the town hall has initiated an investment of 1.3 million lei to build a new clinic, which will be dedicated in July. The new clinic will include psychological and speech units, an Internet room, and a daycare center for 20 children, but it will still lack a gynecological unit. Dr. Lazea from APH performed the last gynecological exams for Roma women in Slobozia Bradului two years ago. Dr. Lazea is also the one trying to initiate at least one project in order to obtain funds to finance the weekly visit of two gynecologists to check on the condition of the pregnant women in Slobozia Bradului. Furthermore, he envisions founding a second clinic in Coroteni where an additional family doctor would work. “A second clinic is being set up in the building of the former cooperative farm in Coroteni, where, as far as I know, another family doctor will operate, who will also live in the area. But we don’t know yet when the project will be finalized,” Dr. Lazea added. If things seem to be improving, as far as the clinic is concerned, the problem of ambulances is still a serious one. The only ambulances which can reach the community are those from Dumbraveni and Focsani, but it takes half an hour for them to arrive. The situation is even more difficult for Roma women in the villages Cornetu and Liesti where houses are built on hills that are impassable during rainy weather, as the road becomes muddy and inaccessible. The pregnant women are forced to walk or they are carried by relatives to the main road from where they hitchhike if the ambulance is delayed in arriving.

Only Pharmacy in the Community Does Not Sell Discounted and Free Medicine

More than 50 percent of the Roma population in Slobozia Bradului are very poor. Many of them can barely put food on their tables and they try to make the most of the benefits offered by the state such as prescriptions for discounted and free drugs. But the Roma in Slobozia Bradului can’t even get that much, because the pharmacy in the community has never sold drugs at a discount—the owner of the pharmacy does not consider it profitable for his business. “Currently we are unable to sign a contract with the House for Health Insurance for the pharmacy in Slobozia Bradului because there are very few people there who have health insurance anyway, and it wouldn’t be profitable at all. Anyway the law does not impose that we sign contracts with the HHI to that end,” declared Madalina Chivu, the owner of the pharmacy.

Around 20 people a month come to the clinic with outdated prescriptions in order to have them renewed because they were unable to pay for bus fare to the nearest pharmacy that provides discount or free drugs. Some of the Roma in Slobozia Bradului have to walk 20 kilometers to reach the pharmacies which sell discount and free drugs because they don’t have their own means of transportation or the money for the minibus fare. This is the case for 50-year-old Candachia Calin from Liesti who has diabetes and is mentally disabled. Simona Iordan, Candachia’s daughter-in-law, said:

My mother-in-law walks a long distance to get her drugs cheaper at the pharmacies in Dumbraveni, Ramnicu Sarat, or Tamboiesti because she cannot even afford to spend her money on the bus ticket, poor soul. And anyway, her prescriptions for discount or free drugs often become overdue because she has no money to buy them. Sometimes she goes to the clinic to have the doctor renew them, but then she still cannot buy them, because she only gets 500,000 in former currency, as welfare aid. She often doesn’t get that much either, because she is ill and she doesn’t manage to do the number of hours of civil work. Sometimes I cover some of her hours for her, but I’m not always here to do them all.

Maternity Ward in Focsani: The Worst Place for Roma Discrimination?

The Roma in Slobozia Bradului complain that the worst place for ethnic discrimination is in the maternity ward in Focsani. Our reporters interviewed several women in Slobozia Bradului who declared that they were victims of discrimination. With the few exceptions presented here, the women asked us not to make their stories public, for fear there might be repercussions. Twenty-four-year-old Ramona Lautaru told us that the Roma women are usually belittled in the maternity ward and that they are neglected and left in pain because they are Roma. Twenty-five-year-old Mariana Moise told us stories from birthing-rooms in the maternity ward in Focsani:

I have five children and I am expecting my sixth. Only the people in the maternity ward in Foscani treat us badly. They keep telling us that we are Roma, that we have a child every year; they pick fights with us, and tell us that we are stupid to have so many children. The call us Gypsies, idiots, filthy . . . and they don’t treat us properly, they shove us around. It’s rather dangerous there because they have no mercy. If we give them money they become friendlier, and if we don’t they even slap us occasionally ... It happens that they don’t give us pain-killers. They are kindlier with the Romanian women; it often happens to have your baby delivered only with the help of the nurses, the doctors leave.

Some of the women have lost their babies while others have been forced to deliver them in the corridors of the maternity ward. Leventica Stoica, another Roma woman from Slobozia Bradului tells her story:

I delivered my girl on the concrete floor in the hallway. When you go to Focsani they grab you, they left me there to die of pain and when I finally had to deliver my child, I fell on the floor of the hallway and dropped it on the concrete. I thought she was going to die. They started yelling at me why I had the baby on the floor. “You couldn’t keep it a little longer inside, bitch, could you?” they screamed at me. They leave you in pain. When they give us injections they do it brutally or hastily, not the way they give them to the others. They slap us. I’m not going to the maternity ward in Focsani any more. I went to Bucharest and to Ramnicu Sarat and it’s different there. Seven years ago, when I had my first child in the maternity in Focsani, a nurse beat me because I had woken her up in the middle of the night, although she was on duty and she ought to have stayed in my ward.

These are only a few of the cases of discrimination against Roma women from Slobozia Bradului. The representatives of the maternity ward deny that this could happen. “Show me a woman from Slobozia Bradului who doesn’t complain about something. The Gypsies do that all the time. We often insist that they remain or return to the maternity ward, but they want to leave. There are no cases of discrimination in our maternity ward, especially if there are women who need treatment. If the patient needs the drugs, nobody keeps them locked away. If you don’t give me concrete cases we cannot talk about this,” said Dr. Marin Popescu, the director of the maternity ward in Focsani. “We treat them with special care, precisely because they are unruly and we are afraid of them. We, Romanians come to discriminate ourselves,” said Dr. Ion Sandulescu.

Ethnic and Political Discrimination: Roma Left without Drinking Water Because of a Political Scandal

The Roma in Slobozia Bradului represent one of the largest Roma communities in the country. Still they do not benefit from the medical services to which they are entitled. The authorities in the community have not implemented any important health projects, only a program of dental hygiene in the schools. As for disabled people—the only category in which state-funded projects for Roma support can be integrated—there have only been two proposals in 2003–2004 via the Romanian Fund for Social Development. One proposed covering two roads inaccessible by car with gravel and sand, but the project didn’t get funded for political reasons, says Valerica Zamfirescu the mayor and a member of the Liberal Party. The other project, to build a feed pipe in Slobozia Bradului in 2004, was withdrawn from the funding pool by the president of the county council because the mayor allegedly refused to become a member of the Social Democratic Party when the general elections were drawing near. The mayor explains:

We had a project for a feed pipe in 2004, here, in Slobozia Bradului. We had obtained 3.5 billion lei in former currency through the project Solel Boneh implemented by Government’s Decision 687/1997 and it was withdrawn by the county council, because I refused to become a member of the Social Democratic party in 2004, when the elections were held. And my community’s project was replaced by three others, probably where the Social Democratic Party has the majority.

Surprisingly enough, Marian Oprisan, the president of the county council in Vrancea, declared that he withdrew the funds for the project according to the procedures of the Ministry for Transport and Construction and Tourism, because Slobozia Bradului already had a pipe system at the time, which only needed to be extended. The answer from the county council to a request filed by our reporters according to the Law 544/2001 follows:

In 2003, the county council in Vrancea drew up and approved a list of communities which was forwarded to the Ministry for Public Works, Transport, and Housing, in order to get the funds allotted according to the Government’s Decision 687/1997 regarding the water supply systems. The list included the proposal for a new water supply system in Slobozia Bradului, but following the verifications performed in the community, this proposal was not accepted by the ministry because the community already had a working water supply system which had to be rehabilitated and extended. But the G.D. 687/1997 foresaw that the financial investment should only target the construction of new systems.

The community members in Slobozia Bradului still take their water from wells and hope to have water pumps outside their gates at the beginning of October. In addition to that, the county council declared that no other community benefited from the funds originally allotted to Slobozia Bradului in 2003–2004 for the feed pipe.

Roma: Pushed to the Perimeters of Society

Manea Saftica, 24, lives with her four children (and is expecting her fifth) in a hut without windows, on the edge of the forest. The five of them have no drinking water, no electricity, and live in indescribable filth. Saftica brings water in buckets from almost 2 kilometers away and feeds her children with whatever she can find. When the reporters visited her, she had just prepared the food for the children—a few boiled potatoes in a bowl. Saftica has no income. She cannot take on a job as a day worker because she has to raise her children. Her husband works in Bucharest and comes home only once every couple of weeks. She has never received welfare. “I meant to get welfare aid but the welfare assistant from the town hall told me that he wouldn’t give me any, that it’s my fault I have so many children. I don’t want to have any more but my husband won’t let me,” says Saftica. Valerian Ghinica, the welfare assistant, told us that Saftica had a registered file to get welfare aid, but then claimed that she had never been entered on the list because she never filed a request for it. “She should have come to me and she would have had welfare aid by now,” said Ghinica. “We cannot give her welfare aid without a written request, and we only give to those people who are registered with us.” Saftica doesn’t even get the children’s government allowances, let alone medication for her family.

The Roma Preserve Their Traditions

In spite of all their problems, the Roma in Slobozia Bradului try to keep their traditions alive. For instance, there are still ring and comb manufacturers in the region. Niculai Romanescu, 83, is the only comb manufacturer left in the community. He used to make them out of cattle horn, but now he only makes them of plastic, because, “they no longer sell so well.” He learned the skill from his father but he is sad because business is not what it used to be. “Now I make combs of plastic. I gather scrap plastic from factories and I make the combs from it. I bend the plastic over the fire; I mould it and cut the teeth with a small saw. Business used to be better because people were dirtier and they used to buy combs to get rid of lice, but now it doesn’t work anymore,” says the old man. Still, he found a wholesaler who buys all his combs monthly. It’s a merchant from the market in Buzau, who buys 50–60 combs every month. The wholesale price of a comb is one leu and the retail price is two lei. The business only brings him a few hundred lei a month in the former currency, but it helps the old man survive.

Ion Romanescu is the other manufacturer in the community who tries to continue the tradition of ring-making. He is 76-years-old and has been making gold and silver rings for more than 60 years. We are all sure to have seen him at least once at the back of the markets in Focsani, Buzau, or Mangalia. He sells the silver rings for 5 lei a gram in the new currency, and the gold rings for 26 lei a gram. He works with the customers’ materials. He has his own patterns and he hopes to set up a real jeweler’s shop in Slobozia, which he could run, because he is rather old and cannot walk to the market or fairs. “It works all right, but it is rather difficult. I want to set up a big jeweler’s shop here and I’m going to run it. Now I’m trying to get the authorizations for two years from a financial inspector,” the old man proudly says.