UNMIK ON AIR

Poverty in Kosovo

17 November 2003

(By Valon Syla)

Hello and Welcome to this edition of UNMIK on Air.

Walking through one of the main streets of Prishtina one can see a number of children begging for money; some of them will make around 10 Euros per day and those with more charisma will probably make more. We talked to Bekim from Drenica; he manages to make around 8 Euros per day.

Bekim: I started to beg after the war, my father was working before the war, and now he has no job, with the money I gather, I buy food, cigarettes, oil and things like this

Every day Bekim comes from Gllogoc, one of the poorest municipalities in Kosovo, to Prishtina; He looks for a corner in the main street, puts his hood on his head, and stretches his hand begging for the mercy of the many unemployed kosovars to throw him a coin. He has 5 members in his family and none of them are employed.

According to a research done by RiInvest and sponsored by UNDP and USAID around 12 percent of Kosovo’s population lives under similar conditions to this beggar from Drenica, which cannot afford a piece of bread. And according to the World Bank 50 percent of Kosovans are considered to be poor and have less than 2 Euros per day to spend.

Isa Mustafa an economist and researcher for RiInvest, says that the present high rate in poverty is affecting the life expectancy of Kosovo’s population.

Isa Mustafa: The report has estimated that nearly 20 percent of the population lives less than 40 years, an argument that tells a lot about the food available and the life standard of this percentage of the population and that their living conditions do not enable a longer life.”

The high levels of poverty affect as well the level of education and according to RiInvest’s report, around 20 percent of poor families cannot afford to send their children to school, Isa Mustafa says there are two factors for this

Isa Mustafa: The first reason is that these families cannot afford to pay for the clothes, books and other school items. The second reason is that the poor families have to choose between two alternatives, to attend school or to work. In this case around 6.5 percent of the surveyed have said that if they were obliged to decide for their children to leave the school or to start working, they would choose to start working because they have no other source of income.

Isa Mustafa explains that after the conflict in Kosovo around 12 percent of the rural population migrated from their villages to other cities finding themselves with no jobs and thus no income source, subsisting in most cases from social aid.

According to the Ministry of Social Welfare, 50,300 families are living out of social aid, and many of these families are concentrated in the city areas.

Isa Mustafa says that stimulating the migrated population to go back to their villages and work their lands as in the past could reverse this situation.

Isa Mustafa: The development of agriculture and stimulation of small and medium enterprises will have an impact on reducing the employment rate as well the rate of poverty.

Meanwhile Kosovo’s government needs to establish an economic strategy to reduce the high unemployment rate in order to reduce the rate of poverty in Kosovo and give so many others like Bekim a chance to work and go to school.

And that’s it from UNMIK on Air, Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more.