Vidra, Romania (AP) – Mihai Bratu scrapes a dangerous existence for his Roma family, amid the dirty burning plastic that covers the air day and night.
As with many people in this community, it seems illegal for him to set fire to anything he can find that contains metal, from computers to tapes to electrical cables.
“We sell it to people who buy metal, we are poor people … we have to work hard for a week or two to get one kilogram of metal,” said the 34-year-old Bratu, who is sitting on an old wooden cart. , tells The Associated Press. “We struggle to feed our children … The rich people have the villas, look at the rich’s palaces.”
You do not have to look far.
The highway that runs through Sintesti, a largely Roma village in the Vidra township, is lined with ornate, semi-built villas and dotted with shiny SUVs. Behind hide the parts where Bravu and his young children live, a social black hole without sanitation or running water. The two worlds are strongly connected.
For Octavian Berceanu, the new head of Romania’s National Environmental Watch, the agency for the protection of the environment, the pollution from the illegal fires that burn here almost incessantly was so severe that he started regular raids in the community – where he started the lord says “mafia structures”. it about ‘modern slaves’.
‘It’s a kind of slavery, because the people who live here have no opportunity for school to get a job in the city, which is very close. “They do not have infrastructure such as an official power grid, water, roads – and that destroys their outlook on life,” Berceanu told The Associated Press during a police-led tour in April.
The slums of Sintesti, like Roma communities elsewhere, have long been ignored by authorities. They consist of improvised houses, where unofficially applied electricity cables embrace the ground and run over a sea of rubbish.
“For too many years, they were somehow allowed to do this dirty work,” Berceanu said. “No one has come here before to see what happens.”
One day in April during a patrol in the local area, the authorities seized a van loaded with 5,000 kilograms of illegal copper, worth as much as 40,000 euros. It is but a small gear in the local illegal metal recycling industry and highlights the staggering income it can bring to wealthy homeowners.
But in addition to the major social ills, according to the head of the environment, the fires can significantly increase pollution in Bucharest, possibly by as much as 20-30%, which can sometimes push the air quality to dangerous levels.
‘The smoke particles are taken ten miles by the wind, it’s like rain over Bucharest and it destroys the quality of the air in the capital. It is a hundred times more dangerous than wood fire particles – there are many toxic components, “said Berceanu.
During a late afternoon patrol in Sintesti, AP journalists joined Berceanu and four police officers as they went home in a rapid cloud of smoke rising above the hotchot dwellings. An ominous scene broke out until a stooped elderly lady could be persuaded to put out the fire with water and expose the precious metal remains.
“If local authorities do not enforce the law, people – regardless of their ethnic origin – will of course be encouraged to continue doing what they do,” said Gelu Duminica, a sociologist and executive director of the Impreuna agency, a Roma -focused -governmental organization.
Duminica concentrates on pollution by the Roma community, instead of on the big industry or the more than 1 million cars in the densely populated capital of 2 million, it is ‘scapegoat’ and part of a political ‘branding campaign’.
‘All over the world, the poorest use the marginal resources to survive. We have a chain of causes: low education, low infrastructure, low development … many things are low, ‘Duminica said
‘The rich Roma control the poor Roma, but the rich Roma are controlled by others. If you look at who is the leader and who controls things, it is likely that you will have big surprises. “Let’s not consider it an ethnic issue,” he said.
In the future, the head of the environment hopes that surveillance drones with pollution sensors and infrared cameras can help to paint a clearer picture of the operation of the networks.
“We are working against organized crime and it is very difficult,” he said. “If we solve this problem here, very close to Bucharest, we can solve any kind of similar problem across the country.”
For local resident Floria, who refused to give up a surname but said she was 40, a lack of official documents, education and options leaves her and her community no alternative.
“We do not want to do that. “Why don’t they give us jobs like (the communist dictator Nicolae) Ceausescu earlier, they would come by bus, by car and take us to work,” she told The Associated Press. “Gypsies are seen as the worst people, no matter where we go or what we do.”
Mihai Bratu blames local authorities for the state of his community, for the lack of roads, the lack of action.
“The mayor is not helping us!” he exclaims, as a little boy moves building materials from Bratu’s horse-drawn carriage to the muddy garden next door.
‘What do we have? What can we have? Some house? Whatever God has given us. ”