BRATISLAVA, July 23, (WEBNOVINY) — Alojz Hlina from the opposition OLaNO party of Igor Matovic presented his findings from his last week’s five-day tour of Roma settlements across Slovakia at a news conference on Monday. His key proposal for dealing with the problem facing the Roma minority is canceling the current childbirth benefit and redefining state support in its family policy to financial assistance for a maximum of three children in a family.
„If it continues as it is now, the whole social system will collapse. The key moment is to find justice,“ Hlina told a news briefing. In his opinion, everyone who refuses to realize that state support should end with two or three children is ignorant. The opposition MP calls “evil money” that causes suffering of children the current state childbirth benefit in the form in which it was adopted by the first government of Robert Fico. „Children are born into the gutter and end up in the gutter. They live a completely undignified life. Canceling the childbirth benefit is necessary because in some communities, the uterus became a production asset,“ he said.
Hlina said he would wait until September to see what position the government will adopt in relation to problems of the Roma community. If it fails to come up with proposals addressing the core issues, in September, Hlina plans to inform the prime minister about a legal motion he would submit at the international court. However, Hlina did not want to specify its content at this point.
Hlina’s party colleagues, Chairman Igor Matovic and member Peter Pollak presented their findings from their last week’s “Tour de Roma”. In their words, they agree with Hlina in identifying the greatest problems but they disagree with his suggested solutions. Matovic and Pollak maintain they found in Roma settlements that children whose education is neglected later become dependent on the social system and that irresponsible parents do not use the childbirth benefit to cover the needs of the child, or that the system encourages children after leaving school to remain dependent on social benefits.
SITA