MINELRES: Fwd: Hungary: Minorities' ombudsman calls on gov't to do more to tackle Roma segregation

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Original sender: Roma Virtual Network <romale@zahav.net.il>


Minorities' ombudsman calls on gov't to do more to tackle Roma
segregation 
 
Budapest, November 7 (MTI) - The government must do more to strengthen
structures monitoring segregation in schools and enforcing zero
tolerance, said the minorities' ombudsman on Wednesday. 

Erno Kallai called on the civil service administrative office and the
education ministry to strengthen co-operation with the minorities'
ombudsman's office to bolster efforts to stamp out segregation, which
mainly affects Hungary's Roma community. 

Appearing at a press conference with Socialist politician Andras
Tatai-Toth, Kallai said the state must play a much bigger role in
intervening to ensure that Roma students are not the victim of
educational segregation. He said local governments were ill-equipped to
deal with this type of problem. 

It should dawn on Hungary's political elite that there are no long-term
social development programmes - instead of looking at the next four
years they should plan for the next twenty to thirty, he said. "We must
break the vicious cycle that forces educational segregation from
generation to generation," he said, adding that making students who have
been discriminated against fit for the labour market would ensure that
society did not have to look after them.

Tatai-Toth said that the ruling Socialist parliamentary party's
educational working group supported giving the ombudsman all the
necessary powers to enable him to achieve effective results. The job of
the government was to make sure the required legal framework and
resources were in place in the long term to secure the appropriate
targets.

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