Meeting with Vesna Jankovic - UNHCR office in Kraljevo - employee in charge of social issues.

On her visit to the Committee's regional office in Cacak, she wanted to know about our possibilities to help the Roma IDP camp of "Stari aerodrom" in Kraljevo, because it has been a year since the local commissioner for refugees in Kraljevo promised to help the camp. At a meeting held in March, he promised to arrange with the local cleaning utility to take away the garbage from the camp regularly and to place another two garbage containers in the camp. None of this has happened yet.

The problem in the camp is also running water, because the faucets have been out of order for a long time now and the space around the faucets is full of mud so it should be graveled.

One of the families, the Berisa family, is in a particularly difficult situation. We took a photo of their 4-year-old daughter in February. The child had no clothes on and her whole body was covered with bruises. The family has 9 children and no source of income. The children don't even have the most necessary clothes, so one of the boys was found begging in the street once, wearing his sister's clothes. They can't go to school at the same time - there is only enough clothes for one child so if one of the children puts on the clothes and goes out, the others have to wait for him to come back so the next child could take the clothes and go out.
We gave Vesna Jankovic some children's clothes that we had collected to take them to the Berisa children.

A new meeting is scheduled for December of all the organizations which are active in the area of Kraljevo. We hope for the representatives of the local authorities to attend the meeting as well, because lots of the problems can't be solved without them.

Although the NGOs' support for the camp is not much, it is still something, but it seems like the local administration doesn't even notice that the camp exists. There is also the problem with the local commissioner for refugees, who promised to engage personally on providing some donations for the camp but nothing have happend. He also promised to arrange with the donors for their 26 000 euro donation to be assigned to the collective center Vila Maricic and Stari Aerodrom.

As for the camp in Novi Pazar, the situation is very bad. The number of tuberculosis patients in the area of Novi Pazar is increasing, which is very alarming. Two persons in the Roma camp are also infected with tuberculosis. A couple of the tents in the settlement caught fire at the beginning of the heating season. The UNHCR office in Kraljevo has no information yet regarding the exact location to which the camp will be moved; whether the tents will be moved or whether they will wait for the housing containers to arrive. The UNHCR provides cash aid for the most vulnerable persons (there are very few beneficiaries of the cash program. Last year, the annual cash aid was 3.000 dinars per person.) The local commissioner for refugees has suggested to Vesna Jankovic not to mail the money directly to the camp because postmen don't go there.

At the meeting on Monday, Vesna Jankovic will have a complete list of the inhabitants of the Roma camp in Novi Pazar.

Marija Simovic