February 9, 2018
Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 09.02.2018, 14:09
PROTEST Justice Minister Tudorel Toader is to brief the government on the statute of the employees in Romania’s penitentiary system in two weeks time. The document will be submitted for Parliament aproval shortly afterwards, Sorin Dumitrascu, head of the Trade Union Federation with the National Administration of the Penitentiaries has announced. Dumitrascu has held talks with Minister Toader about the issues the penitentiary employees are currently facing such as improper working conditions and the shortage of personnel. Protesters have also called for compliance with the rules of overtime pay. Minister Toader has presented on a social network the measures already taken to streamline the system. 10% pay rises are envisaged for October 1st and 1,000 new jobs have been created. The minister has also referred to the 17 hundred people who have already been hired in the penitentiary sector as well as to the funds that have been earmarked from the state budget for building over 5,000 detention cells between 2019 — 2023.
ARREST British police yesterday arrested three men suspected of having held around 200 immigrants into slavery. Most of them are men from Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland and were working at a flower farm in Cornwall, south-western England. According to the BBC, and Reuters, counselling, interpretation services, legal and immigration advice, medical and financial assistance and safe house accommodation would be made available. The British government estimates that at least 13 thousand people are victims of forced labour and sexual exploitation but according to police sources, the real number may run higher.
OLYMPICS 29 hundred althetes, including 28 from Romania, are attending the 23rd edition of the Winter Olympics underway in the South Korean city of PyeongChang between February 9th and the 25th. At the foot of the Taebaek Mountains, the city of PyeongChang has won the right to stage the Winter Olympic Games after having applied for it three times, in 2010, 2014 and 2018. This is the first edition of the Winter Olympics and the second Olympic Games staged by South Korea. PyeongChang has become the third Asian city to stage the Winter Olympics after the Japanese cities of Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998. Over the following two weeks, the city of PyeongChang will be seeing 102 sporting events in 15 disciplines of seven major winter sports.
TENNIS Romanian tennis player Sorana Carstea will be playing Carol Zhao in a singles game in Cluj Napoca, north-western Romania on Saturday, the first game of a series pitching Romania against Canada in the Fed Cup World Group ll. The cast drawn today have pitched Irina Begu against Bianca Andreescu, a Canadian of Romanian extraction, in the competition’s second game. Begu will be up against Zhao on Sunday, while Carstea will be playing Andreescu on the same day. Ana Bogdan and Raluca Olaru will be taking on Katherina Sebov and Gabriela Dabrowski in the doubles contest. Ana Bogdan is replacing the world’s number two player, Simona Halep, in the Romanian lineup. Halep is recovering from an ankle injury she got during Australian Open last month.
EMPLOYMENT In 2016 Romania had the least uncertain job market with 0.2% insecure jobs, data released by EUROSTAT, the Statistical Office of the European Union, show. Romania is followed by Britain, the Czech Republic and Germany. The countries with the highest job insecurity are Croatia, Spain, Poland and Slovenia. 2.3% of the EU employees had insecure jobs in 2016 being in temporary work with contracts not exceeding three months. Most of these jobs were reported in agriculture, forestry and the fishing sector.
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