Poverty affects a large part of Romania’s population, especially the Roma ethnics, but the authorities refuse to acknowledge the amplitude of poverty and discrimination, according to UN inspector Philip Alston, who recently made a visit to Romania.

“Romania is last or close to last in the EU on education, health, social housing and services,” said Alston, who is a UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, reports local Hotnews.ro.

As over 40% of the population faces extreme poverty and social exclusion risks, the state’s spending for improving this situation is extremely low, he said. There are some statistics that show a strong reduction of poverty rates in the last 10-15 years, but according to the World Bank, this is not reliable, Alston added.

He pointed out that the situation was especially dramatic for children, as over a third suffered from “severe material deprivations”, and for Roma, as 90% of their households lived in poverty, and 84% didn’t have running water and electricity.

“If Romania doesn’t solve its poverty problem, one can assume that it has no money. But the money is there. The fact that this money is not allotted to eradicate poverty, even if the state collects taxes, shows a political decision,” Philip Alston said.

“Several of Romania’s Governments have made choices in terms of public policies to improve the living standards of those who already had a good situation, not of the poor. The tax evasion is high and there is a high degree of corruption that reduces the state budget revenues. Even when measures to eradicate corruption are taken, only small amounts of money are confiscated. It’s good, because here you can walk away with the money if you are corrupt,” Alston concluded.

He visited Romania between November 2 and November 11 and made a report he passed to the Government, which will also be presented publicly next summer.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: freeimages.com)