Imagine life in a tin box, without walls, bathroom and hot water, without enough space to sleep, because up to 12 people live in a small space. Such is the life of the Roma in the temporary settlement in Rakovica, where mostly children live. Is there any hope that these families will ever have better living conditions?
Six families and 45 children of the Roma community currently live in the settlement in Rakovica. They live in buildings that are metal structures, and you can see the muddy driveway and cold water, which are certainly not conditions for life. We checked how they live. BHRT was welcomed by Tahira, who came here with her family two years ago.
“Each family has seven, eight or nine children, there are nine of them in the first container…and I have ten brothers and sisters in total. They don’t have clothes for these children who go to school, barely. For hygiene, they need to bathe , not to be, now they go to school, and that’s what they protest about being dirty,” Tahira said.
Inside each building there is a bathroom where children can bathe, while adults use two outside ones for these purposes. With the arrival of the winter period, life here becomes more difficult, because it is colder. Whoever can – works, but the residents tell that money is hard to earn. They mostly rely on the help of good people and schools.
“We don’t even have wood, my mother is sick, we don’t have a bathroom here to take a bath.”
“Sometimes people come here and bring clothing and food. We heat water in barrels and bathe.”, David and Kemal Seferovic say.
The children they talked to tell that they go to school, and for the youngest, preparatory classes are held in an equipped mobile classroom, which is realized with social workers once or twice a month.
“I like going to school. I would like to have my own house. The teacher gives me things and so on.”
“I like going to school, I have friends. I need things for school and I like to study.”, Nermina says.
The head of the Municipality of Ilidža says that the municipality is among the most vulnerable categories of the population.
“Those fellow citizens of ours lived on the street in Velika Aleja in cardboard houses in which they had absolutely no living conditions. We created a temporary alternative accommodation in which fully conditional two-room prefab houses were in the moments when we assigned them to them, signed with them contract that we are assigning it to them for use and informed them that it is a camping site of a temporary nature,” says Nermin Muzur, head of the Municipality of Ilidža.
All defects and deficiencies found in this settlement will be repaired, said the chief and called on other authorities to help and get involved in this issue. The interlocutors at the beginning of the story do not think much about the problems, because every day, they say, is a struggle for survival. And so they live day after day and don’t ask for much, just so they don’t forget that they are also human and deserve a life worthy of a human being.
Photo: illustration
