Register ethnic Roma, says mayor

Dutch local authority areas where Roma families are most concentrated should register their ethnicity, Nieuwegein mayor Cor de Vos, says in Thursday’s Volkskrant.

De Vos, a Labour party supporter, is chairman of the Roma council’s association, which unites the 10 councils where most of the Netherlands’ Roma community is located.
De Vos says of all immigrant groups, the Roma are most removed from Dutch society, making it difficult to help them because there are few hard facts.

Schools
For example, the education ministry wants definite figures when asked for cash to help get Roma children into school. ‘But then they ask ‘how many children are we talking about’,’ Vos said.
Ethic registration is banned by law in the Netherlands but there are some exceptions if it is in the ‘general interest’. One example of this is Rotterdam’s register of problem youth with an Antillean background, the Volkskrant says.
On Wednesday it emerged that the central town of Ede has a list of 2,000 Roma who ‘do not stick to the rules’.

House
Meanwhile, tv programme EenVandaag is to take legal action against a Roma family in Utrecht, who threatened a camera crew making a report about their reportedly €1m home.
The family has been under media siege after it emerged the council has housed them in a large house on the edge of the city after being evicted from city centre locations for troublemaking.
The council says it put the families up in the property because they have three very young children and it has a duty of care. The house is scheduled to be redeveloped and the family is under council supervision, a spokesman told the Telegraaf.