The Roma in Plovdiv
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The Roma in Plovdiv live in 4 areas: Stolipinovo, Sheker Mahala, Hadji Hassan Mahala and Arman Mahala. According to the official census, around 27 000 Roma live in the Plovdiv region. However, the real numbers of Roma in Plovdiv are higher, mainly because many Romani people declare themselves to be of Turkish or different origin. The real Roma population in Plovdiv is considered to be close to 80 000. This figure represents 20% of the population of Plovdiv.
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[edit] Education
Public elementary and secondary schools in Bulgaria are free. However, due to utmost poverty, many children from minority families do not go to school – primarily due to the cost associated with textbooks and other items. Some families choose to send their children to work. There are about 5 people in Stolipinovo with post-secondary education, four people with higher professional education, and only 85 to 90 people who have graduated from secondary school. Nowadays, many of the residents of Stolipinovo, especially the young ones, do not speak the official language, Bulgarian.
[edit] Unemployment
Not least because of the low degree of education and even illiteracy, unemployment is a problem of considerable scale among the Roma in Plovdiv. However, it is not possible to calculate the exact level of unemployment. In the regional working agencies, people register as unemployed without having to say what is their ethnical origin. Some private suggestions point to a level of unemployment reaching up to 90 % of the population.
[edit] Housing
Most of the Roma in Plovdiv live in communist-built blocks of flats and in houses. Some of the houses are extremely old, small, built by people themselves, and lacking proper facilities for electricity and heating. Another extreme exists too – few big new houses, with marble statues in front and big gardens. The problem of illegal construction of building is also acute. In some cases, it obstructs electricity and water supplies and presents a potential danger for the people living in these buildings.
[edit] Electricity
The question of electricity and water consumption in the Stolipinovo district is serious, as the residents have refused to pay their bills for years. Consequently, they accumulated a total debt to the electrical and water company surpassing 3 million euro. When the last year an attempt was made to collect these debts, a conflict arose between the residents of Stolipinovo and the other neighbourhoods in Plovdiv.