25 Oct 2010 / 10:05
Residents from Macedonia’s biggest Roma settlement continue to leave dirt roads and makeshift homes behind in search of jobs and prosperity in the EU.
Sinisa Jakov Marusic
Valijant, a 34-year-old Roma cab driver from the Roma Shuto Orizari settlement, is planning to sell his rusty old Soviet era Lada and its faulty windshield, which has been cracked for two years but requires “a small fortune” to fix.
“I will use the money to go to France where I have a brother. I do not plan to return unless I have to. I will work there doing whatever I can for as long as I can,” Valijant says.
He hopes to start a better life in western Europe. But even if he gets caught by the French authorities for working without a permit, he says he hopes to earn enough to buy himself a new car.
Every day of the week a bus full of people leaves Shuto and heads to western Europe. People sell their houses and whatever little they own to pay for the trip for themselves and their families. Tickets to this promised land cost some EUR 120 per person.
On Thursday the Belgian minister for migration, Melkior Vatle, visited the municipality for the second time this year to persuade local authorities to somehow stop the influx of immigrants into his country.
Belgium, Sweden, Germany and other EU countries recently raised the alarm for the second time this year, claiming that since the visa wall fell for Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro in December 2009, they have been swarmed with asylum seekers from the three countries.
Shuto municipality is a one-of-a-kind place. It is the only town in Macedonia with a Roma mayor and a Roma language radio and TV station. But the 20,000 residents living there, 75 per cent of which are ethnic Roma, are some of the poorest in the country.
Large parts of the settlement are in fact little more than a slum, houses are covered with tin roofs, muddy alleys serve as streets and no proper sewage system exists. Only the main road has a “proper” layer of asphalt; its sidewalks are full with improvised stands on which people sell clothing, acessories, and DVDs, almost all of which are pirated.
One DVD vendor, 26-year-old Elvis, says: “I have everything I want here, my family, friends and the girl I married, but I desperately need a job, a proper one to feed my two children, not selling this rubbish here all day.” Elvis says he spent six months in Germany working at a scrap yard before being deported back to Macedonia.
“Many of my friends have left and only a few of them have returned, because they were sent back,” Elvis explains. “They are already planning their next trip.”
Residents point us to the local tourist agency- “Skay Wim Travel”- that organises the trips to western Europe.
The sign hanging on the door reads 'open', but the door to the agency is locked and the lights are off.
The agency officially sells bus tickets for shopping tours in western Europe- Brussels, Vienna, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Malmo, Lyon, Paris are some of the most popular destinations. “But the people like it so much that they decide to stay and extend their shopping,” one local resident says jokingly.
On Friday the Macedonian parliament adopted a declaration pledging to help the Roma and “their integration into society”.
The declaration aimed to persuade Brussels that Skopje is taking the growing number of asylum seekers leaving Macedonia seriously.
But the fancy words mean nothing to Rahipe Muaremova, a mother of four living in the Roma settlement.
“I do not know what this integration means,” she said. “Why don’t you ask me how I live and if I manage to put food on the table each day?”
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