City of Helsinki not offering housing or health services to itinerant Roma

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The City of Helsinki does not plan to launch an operation to assist the ethnic Roma from Romania who have come to Finland to earn money as pedlars, street musicians, and beggars.
      “We do not want to encourage the begging phenomenon. That is why we are not arranging health services or housing. The problems that lie behind begging should be solved in their home countries”, says Jarmo Räihä, an expert working for the Social Services Department of the City of Helsinki.
      Helsinki also wants to discourage people from giving money to the mendicants.
      The city and the Deaconess Institute nevertheless plan to consider possible concrete action later, on the basis of the report on the itinerant Roma phenomenon, which was published on Thursday.
     
In the project, Tuomo Leinonen interviewed a number of Romanian Roma. He said that he often felt that he “had no hands”, when the Roma asked for money, work, and food.
      “We gave them over-the-counter medicines, and gave advice if someone needed a doctor.”
      Leinonen feels that the itinerant Roma constitute a problem for all of Europe. “Eliminating the poverty problem requires political will.”
      The Roma beggars left their countries because conditions there were poor, work was scarce, and pay was low. Depending on how it is calculated, up to a third of Romanians are living below the poverty line. In the countryside, where most of the Roma coming to Finland are from, the situation is even worse.
     
So what could Helsinki do? Not much, it seems.
      An information point could be set up to increase awareness among the Roma who come here, but even that would only help those who are already here.
      Information could also be put online, but not everyone has access to the Internet.
      “The children need education, as do the adults. They could also be taught languages”, Leinonen ponders.
      The telephone help-line of the Roma project of the Deaconess Institute is still in operation. Recent cold temperatures have not seemed to have caused any surge in calls.
      “They seem to deal with cold temperatures surprisingly well”, Tuomo Leinonen says.
      That seemed to be the case on Thursday as well.
      Mandache Cliutsa, a 35-year-old native of East Romania, sat on the pavement next to a shop window even though the temperature was -7°Celsius. She seemed to be dressed fairly lightly for the Finnish winter.
     
Most passers-by walked past without looking at her.
      Three hours of begging had brought her eight euros.
      She planned to continue for another five hours. “We still owe 4,000 euros on our home, and that is very much money”.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nordic Countries seek solution to itinerant beggar problem (7.4.2008)
  Helsinki to launch campaign to discourage giving money to beggars (19.3.2008)
  OSCE´s Andrezej Mirga: Education of Roma key to everything (7.3.2008)
  Study: Foreign Roma panhandlers earn about EUR 10 a day (8.1.2009)
  Romanian beggars now spread across the country (28.4.2008)

Helsingin Sanomat