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27. 01. 10. - 14:00

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27. 01. 10. - 14:00

Scandal of Romanian sewer families 20 years on

Romanian officials have come under fire for failing to tackle the problems of the country's sewer people who live in the sewer canal network that runs under the main cities.

When communism ended the world was shocked by the images of people including children living in the sewers, yet now more than 20 years on officials have had to admit nothing has changed.

The scandal came to light again this week when social workers together with police decided to have a purge on the sewers as temperatures plunged to minus 20 in order to move the families into hastily erected shelters where they could get food and warmth.

But the shelters are only a temporary measure during the extreme cold and many of the sewer families are expected to move back afterwards because they have nowhere else to go.

So far hundreds of people have been fished from the sewers by officials who had to wear breathing apparatus and special chemical protection suits to protect them from disease and pollution in the underground sewer network.

Officials claimed they have tried to help the sewer families but those living underground train this amounted to simply bricking up the entrances and putting locks on manhole covers to stop them going there rather than offering any alternative.

One, Radu Ionescu, 29, said: "They have a purge every now and again and look up the entrances and after a few weeks someone's broken opget it foren again on the sewers are once again full of people."

Those taken into shelter this week include one teenager aged 16 who said he had fled his violent father and his alcoholic mother to live in a sewer. He said he lives by begging at a local train station.

Although not named for legal reasons he said: "It's too cold in winter and too hot in summer but it's better than being on the streets - the people I've met there are the only family I've got now."

His story was echoed in hundreds of similar sewer pipes, not just in the capital, but in all the other major Romanian cities as well. The numbers have been swollen by those who have returned from attempting to make new lives abroad as jobs dried up during the credit crisis.

The underground sewer network helps carry huge metal pipes that as well as transporting sewerage, also provided central heating to the massive Communist housing blocks from a centralised heating plant.

The poor insulation means that much of the heat leaked out into the sewer corridors, providing warmth for those who took shelter there. There are also open spaces underground originally designed as junction rooms and servicing points for maintenance crews, but now provide warmth and shelter for the city's unwanted.

The first images of the "sewer children" were beamed around the world in 1989 when the country threw off the mantel of Communism. After the initial rush of concern from the international community and a few aid workers who moved to the area to help the children, little was done and many remained, in turn having children of their own which further fuelled the sewer populations.

Numbers were also swelled when EU pressure forced Romania to finally close its huge state orphanages, forcing children like Eugene back to families where they were not wanted or welcome, and from where they fled to the streets.

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