Government pledges EUR 4.76m for Roma colleges

Budapest, January 15 (MTI) – The government has pledged 1.5 billion forints (EUR 4.76m) from European Union funding for colleges of advanced study for Roma students, an official of the human resources ministry said on Friday.

Two new advanced colleges for Roma students were opened this year, a Greek Catholic one in Debrecen and a Calvinist one in Budapest, deputy state secretary Katalin Victor Langer told a talent management conference in Debrecen, eastern Hungary.

The two colleges raise the number of Roma colleges in the country to nine with a total of 235 students enrolled in their talent programmes. Under the government’s Road to Diploma programme another 900 Roma youth will receive support from a budget of 230 million forints this year, she said.

The first results of the social integration programme launched by the government in 2010 were seen in 2014 when the proportion of socially discriminated groups living in poverty dropped to 31.1 percent from 33.5 percent in the preceding year, she said. The number of families with no job option dropped by almost half, she added.

The deputy state secretary called it a milestone in employment policy that 50 major businesses in Hungary that produce 40 percent of the country’s GDP on Thursday established the Integration Promotion Economic Forum with the aim to help the employment of people with low qualifications.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters