VICTIMS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN MOLDOVA - YOUTH, OLDERS AND ROMES

The Eastern Europe Foundation (EEF) with the Center for Partnership for Development implemented a project in Moldova to ensure the equal opportunities that was implemented from December 2015 to May 2017.

At the National Conference on its implementation results, the organizers set before the state the problem of social inequality of youth, the elderly and Roma.

The areas of inequality in Moldova are low living standards, health and employment. According to the Bureau of Statistics, poverty is the main indicator of inequality of the population categories stated above.

In a conversation with the Infotag correspondent, the project consultant, Veronica Sandu said that elderly people who receive scanty pensions are especially affected.

"The pension reform started in Moldova lags behind, at least for 20 years”, she noted.
Statistics show that only 0.2% of people with disabilities, 3.2% of the elderly, and 2.4% of the rest of the population rate their health as "good”.

More than 58% of Roma are outside of the health insurance, this is twice as much as that of other ethnic groups. One third of the people who do not have the health insurance are young people aged 16-29.

The expert of the project, Arkady Astrakhan drew attention to the fact that the last five years the level of inequality in the sphere of the labor activities remains unchanged. Compared with 2010, in 2016 productivity declined, as the number of workers working in agriculture and the shadow economy significantly increased.

“Statistics show that young people and women are the most educated category, and the elderly and men from the rural areas have a low level of education”, emphasized Astrakhan, a specialist in the field of health and human rights.

Infotag's dossier: The project was implemented with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Government of Sweden and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (DANIDA).