decided by the town hall, according to the budget planning, to the priorities and – as some interviewers suggested – to the political decision of the town hall representatives (who grant full social benefits only in winter and smaller amounts in summer, when it is known that the Roma perform informal work in agriculture). Because of these fluctuations, conflicts raise between the Roma and the town hall representatives. Among the most difficult social cases, one can mention a mono-parental family, in which the mother has to bring up 5 children, one of them being physically challenged, and her only solution is to prostitute for the drivers passing by on DN3.
9.3. Alphabetization and education One good aspect in this field is that there is there is only one school in the village and only one class at each level of education, thus there is no school segregation against the Roma children. In additions, the school is well equipped and warm. The school abandon is low for this generation of Roma children – partly motivated by the children allowance for attending pupils. Still, the level of education and alphabetization is very low in the Roma group (the majority of them has 4 classes, only few have about 8, with no qualification) – because of historical reasons combined with economic ones. The Roma minority generally has a very low educational mobility. In Lehliu, this is perpetuated by the fact that most Roma children have no conditions for doing homework, no study materials and homework assistance form their low educated families. In addition, teenagers start having household responsibilities after a certain age and must take care of the younger brothers. As many previous studies and projects already showed, education is one of the important intervention domains for improving the situation of the Roma and the poor, on the long run.
9.4. Health conditions In short, the health condition for most of the dwellers in the Roma community from Lehliu-sat can be describes as follows: - because of not having a formal work contract, most of the adults don’t have a health insurance or an accident insurance for workers - only “VMG” social benefit receivers have access to health care (VMG benefit includes health insurance for all the members of the granted family) - lack of information about the new medical system (which actually is quite difficult to understand). Maybe this is a reason why most of the Roma come to the doctors only in emergency situations – even if they have the right for regular controls - a recent pharmacy was opened in the village - a medical unit functions daily till 2 pm, run by 1 doctor and 1 nurse, who come from daily commute from Bucharest. The doctor claims she also treats the persons without any insurance; but these “uncovered” people cannot purchase subsided drugs - there was a TBC epidemics in the last years, in the entire region, now it is stopped. But some Roma children and adults (who are not under medical surveillance) are suspects of carrying the disease - the costs for analysis and pregnancy controls are very high for those uncovered by insurance – the only possibility is to declare (with the doctor’s help) an emergency - all Roma children are vaccinated - birth control issues: birth control methods are not very popular in the village, generally. The Roma group has a much higher fertility rate - there is no health mediator for the Lehliu community.
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