Pata Rat- 2015

Date 17 January 2016 Author Tomi Doggy Category Youth

Pata Rat is “the largest ghetto near a landfill, in Europe”, representing the decades picture of poverty, and misery by the Roma living from waste recovery.
The Community is now made of three groups of people or establishments as they are called: Canton, Dallas and New Pata Rat. They bring together about 2,000 Roma.
There it is said that until 1989, on the landfill were settled only ten Roma families After ‘90 began to come increasingly more because of the lack of housing and income. These are the two major factors that have favored the Roma community from Pata Rat. The first,“Dallas”, was the so ironically named “precisely because it has nothing to do with the famous city of US series. I live here for years … families who make their living exclusively from the collection of waste from landfill, which they then sell on … the Dallas Cluj” – here people live for over 28 years in Indian slum conditions, due to the city landfill and “more people of Roma origins”.
The second, Canton ghetto emerged in the early 90’s, as an “interim” measure of the city hall. The housing is mostly made by wooden barracks.
Later in 2010 due to municipality project, that started on the Coastei street, for a church building, modular housing was promised in Pata-Rat for all Roma that were living in the city center.
The families that are now living here were evacuated in the middle of the night on 17t of December 2010, and since then hundreds of NGOs and campaigns did not make any change.
The community came out on its first street protest in January 19, 2011 under the aegis “I’m Rom – I want to live in dignity”.
Backed by the Working Group of Civil Organizations, established in January 2011 as an informal network against segregation and ghettoization the community evacuated from Coastei participated in numerous protests which claimed the right to decent housing and dignity. The case has been internationalized under the attention of organizations such as Amnesty International, the European Roma Rights Center, United Nations Development Program, Open Society Institute, ERGO and the European Commission, and have argued that each community by means of their specific fight.
Tracking back their public events, we can mention:
• October 2011 World Day of Housing;
• December 2011 – March for Social Justice;
• December 2012 – And we belong to the city;
• June 2013, World Environment Day;
• December 2013 – Take us out of Pata Rat
Then trough Desire Foundation and Common Front for Housing Rights (with support from Amnesty International and the European Roma Rights Centre)
• April 8, 2014
• April 10, 2014
• December 2014 – Four years of fighting for housing justice
• 2015, SoKeresEuropa March, on desegregation
From 2013 until February 2014, a team of academics and representatives of local NGOs in the process of building Cluj Development Strategy for 2014-2020, contributed pro Bono on a set of proposals for inclusion socio-territorial Roma communities in Pata Rat, included in Cluj Strategy 2020 – inclusive city. The proposals were based on the knowledge gained from team members long and diverse collaboration with individuals and families in Pata Rat
Despite all these initiatives and activities, families evacuated from the Coastei street are in 2015 living in Pata Rat under unbelievable conditions. Neither the families of the colonies in Pata Rat had no access to decent social housing or have adequate resources to move to other neighborhoods of the city.
They are still on pending for local public policies on desegregation and financing programs to support access to decent housing.
As hopeless desperate measure to take again attention on their case, Pata Rat joined So Keres Europa Youth festival, and had the biggest Roma youth march in Romania, anti segregation.
3 months later, going there, nothing happen, there was no change or no further attention from local authorities. “WE ARE A HOPLESS SITUATION” Linda, one of the inhabitants in Pata-Rat told me. Looks like the cycle of poverty in Pata-Rat is a never ending story, growing further informal economy, prostitution and criminality. Who is responsible for this?