Orban to Appoint Farkas Commissioner for Roma

Budapest, October 9 (MTI) – Prime Minister Viktor Orban had talks with Florian Farkas, head of the National Roma Self-Government (ORO) on Thursday, and announced after the meeting that Farkas would be offered a position of prime ministerial commissioner “to aid the Roma community”.

At the press conference following the talks, Orban said that the Roma community was a “hidden resource” for Hungary, adding that he preferred mobilising that resource to meet future challenges of a labour shortage to employing immigrants.

“If we want a labour force of hundreds of thousands of skilled people, we need to concentrate on training and education of the Roma community and prepare them for the labour market,” the prime minister said.

Orban said that immigration should be stopped because the current tendencies could lead to “serious problems”. Instead, Europe should assist those countries whose people tend to emigrate and settle in the EU.

Commenting on the government’s fostered employment schemes, Orban said those programmes had been “the greatest benefit” for the Roma community in the past four years. He insisted that out of the 300,000 people participating in the programmes during the past one year 57,000 had not been employed before and used public work as a first opportunity.

Orban said that under an agreement with ORO, the government had assisted 35,000 young Roma to complete secondary school through scholarship programmes.

Farkas said at the press conference that he would accept the position offered.

He added that Hungary’s Roma were “ready to take responsibility for their future” and were willing to work and study.

Photo: MTI – Szilard Koszitcsak

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