No money set aside for purchase of Lety pig farm in budget- press


PRAGUE- No money has been set aside in the draft budget for next year for the purchase and removal of the pig farm near Lety located on the site of a former Romany concentration camp, the daily Hospodarske noviny writes.

The Chamber of Deputies is expected to take the final vote on next year's state budget on Friday. Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies budget committee Michal Kraus (senior governing Social Democrats, CSSD) told the paper that the only chance of obtaining the money was for the government to use money from the government's budget reserve.

According to certain estimates, the purchase of the pig farm would require 300 million crowns.

Representatives of Romany organisations have been demanding for years the removal of the pig farm that is located on the site where the former Nazi internment camp for Romanies was during World War Two.

Hospodarske noviny points out that Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek (CSSD) again stated a month ago that the budget would have money for the purchase and re-settlement of the pig farm.

"No such proposal has been raised and things that municipalities mostly need such as kindergartens, sewage plants and playgrounds have been given preference," Kraus told the paper. He thus explained why none of the deputies remembered about the need to purchase the pig farm when the draft budget bill was debated in the budget committee.

However, government human rights commissioner Svatopluk Karasek (junior governing Freedom Union-DEU) believes that the "prime minister did not just make wild guesses" and that the money from the budget will finally be found.

Hospodarske noviny says that during the Friday vote on the budget the deputies will be able to allot a total of 20 million crowns for municipality needs, distributing the money among their constituencies. The sum appeared as the result of the rejection by the Chamber of Deputies of a bill on absentee vote for which a certain reserve was prepared.

The daily points out that artists should also receive money money. Actress and US-DEU deputy Tatana Fischerova has proposed 100 million for them. Orchestras, choirs and theatres should receive 20 million crowns, and 80 million should be designed for grants to finance cultural projects beginning with galleries and ending with dancers, according to Fischerova.

($1=24.703 crowns)

EDITORIAL COMMENT:
Oh, what a surprise - NOT. Despite saying again and again that they would buy the pig farm and turn it into a memorial for the murdered Sinti and Roma the Czech governments default on this. Did anyone really expect anything else?