Territorial Concentration of the Poor People in the Petroşani Depression
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The Annals of Valahia University of Târgovişte, Geographical Series, Tome 10 / 2010 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ TERRITORIAL CONCENTRATION OF THE POOR PEOPLE IN THE PETROŞANI DEPRESSION Andra COSTACHE1 1Valahia University of Târgovişte Abstract: The paper analyses the features of the deprived urban areas from Petroşani Depression, characterized by the residential concentration of the poor people, but also by poor living conditions, households with limited access to utilities and low acces to urban services. These areas have been identified following field surveys applied in the six towns of the studied region. Key words: Petroşani Depression, poverty, deprived urban areas 1. Dimensions of poverty in the Petroşani Depression. In the Petroşani Depression, the level of poverty is a direct consequence of the regions’ evolution in the last 50 years and of the economic restructuring. These factors have had an impact on the structure of active and inactive population and influenced the income sources and the income level, which are the main prerequisites of poverty. Compared to the national average for urban areas, in the cities of Petroşani Depression the income from wages, from self-employed activities or from goods saling (other than agricultural products) have a lower weight. On the other hand, there are higher than the national urban averages the value of social transfers and the amount of services that are covered by certain discounts provided by employers (in this case the National Pit Coal Company) – Table 1. This reflects the dependence of incomes on the welfare system and on the coal-extracting activities (the revenues of 14.3% of households rely solely on wages, social benefits or social transfers from CNH - Negulescu et al., 2004). Table 1 Structure of the total household income Type of revenues Petroşani Depression – România urban (%) –urban (%) Cash income 78.8 85.3 Wages, allowances, bonuses 37.2 57.3 Self-employed activities, sale of goods other than agricultural products 1.3 4.6 Sales of agricultural products 0.4 0.6 Revenues provided by the welfare system 36.6 18.8 - Pensions 22.9 14.6 - Unemployment benefit, support allowance 2.0 1.1 - Other social transfers 11.6 3.1 In kind income 21.2 14.7 The amount of free or discounted services, provided by the employer 17.1 0.7 (NPC) The value of agricultural products produced by the private households 4.1 14 for own use (Stănculescu, 2004) The structure of inactive population and of the workforce, as well as the ratio between the two categories show a discrepancy between the number of people dependents or 109 The Annals of Valahia University of Târgovişte, Geographical Series, Tome 10 / 2010 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ benefiting from social transfers and the number of those who receive a wage. In the Petroşani Depression, the total activity rate is of 36.6% and the overall employment rate has an average of 28.7%, below the national urban averages (44.4% and 40.1%). The economic dependency ratio is of 2.48 inactive and unemployed people/ employed person. Among the inactive population, the housewives own a significant share (14.6%, nearly three times the amount recorded in urban areas at national level – fig. 1). The towns Uricani, Lupeni and Aninoasa are characterized by a critical situation in terms of economic dependence, which is correlated with the high values of poverty rate. % Pupils, 35 30 students 25 20 Housewives 15 10 5 Pensioners 0 Petrila Vulcan urban Petro DP- Others ş ani Fig. 1. The structure of inactive population (Data source: Stănculescu, 2004) According to the World Bank (Stănculescu, 2004), about 28 000 people from the Petroşani Depression live in poverty and the average poverty rate (19.43%) is closer to the Romania’s urban average (17.63%). For the individual settlements, the study emphasizes values of the poverty rate lower than national averages for the cities whith the same demographic size (fig. 2). Still, the actual dimensions of the phenomenon in the region are revealed by the food poverty rate and the rate of extreme poverty, which have values of 2.35, respectively 1.93 times higher than the national urban average. Thus, 6.31% of the Petroşani Depression’s residents are living on the edge of survival, their revenues barely covering the food needs (food poverty). The extreme poverty rate (percentage of people who can cover food needs but not the non-food ones) is of 10.38%. In the cities of the region, poverty is much deeper in some cases, e.g. at Uricani the food poverty rate exceeds 4.1 times the average for Romanian cities of comparable size, and the extreme poverty rate is two times higher than this average. A difficult situation characterizes the town of Aninoasa, where the poverty rates are 1.3-1.8 times higher than the average calculated for the Romanian cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. The poverty rate is correlated with the unemployment, the lack of education or the lack of professional qualifications, but also with ethnicity. According to the above mentioned study, the most affected by poverty are the single parent families (in which women, widowed or divorced, are the head of the family), the large families (whose family head, usually a Roma ethnic, received a poor education and had no job) and families whose income are based on social transfers (8% of households, most of them below the food poverty line) and on different types of pensions. The local peasants (momârlani) are less exposed to poverty than the immigrated workers and their families, as the agricultural products can cover consumption needs and they can represent even income sources when sold on the local market. 110 The Annals of Valahia University of Târgovişte, Geographical Series, Tome 10 / 2010 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Fig. 2. The poverty rate in the towns of the Petroşani Depression (%) (Data source: Stănculescu, 2004) The recovery from the state of extreme poverty is a difficult process that exceeds in most cases the financial resources of the affected people. The solutions adopted by those who lose their jobs or have not had a stable job are less effective and do not provide long term income security. The most frequent coping mechanisms are: seeking the support of the local authorities; borrowing money from friends or relatives; finding a temporary job, without an official labor contract (e.g. day-labourers in agriculture and construction); gaining money from the sale of scrap metals or harvesting and selling berries, mushrooms and medicinal herbs. Migration for employment abroad was also a coping mechanism in the context of revenue loss, but it was efficient only for those affected by poverty that had a certain level of expertise and which were benefiting from the support of family and friends. 2. Territorial concentration of the poor people in the Depression Petroşani As in other urban areas, in the cities of the Petroşani Depression there are several areas characterized by the residential concentration of the poor people (fig. 3). These are mainly the neighborhoods inhabited by the mine workers (colonii - colonies), which are located on the outskirts of towns or in their historical center. The inhabitants of these residential areas (districts or parts of neighborhoods), are people with a similar educational and professional profile, that have been severely affected by the economic restructuring and by the changes of the labor market. The formation of poor urban areas following the deprivation of residents and the out-migration of those with a higher mobility is a commonly found process in the industrialized regions of Romania. The urban areas inhabited by the poor people are characterized by damaged houses and apartment blocks (because of their age, of abandonment or lack of maintenance), limited access to utilities, housing overcrowding, squalid living conditions and, in some cases, a specific atmosphere (caused by the presence of people "on the street"), which creates a feeling of lack of orders and insecurity (the appearance is not confirmed by the behavior of the inhabitants). In the city of Petroşani, among residential areas with a high concentration of poor people there are the following neighborhoods: the neighborhood Colonie, located on the left 111 The Annals of Valahia University of Târgovişte, Geographical Series, Tome 10 / 2010 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ side of Jiu de Est river, between the river and the national road Petroşani-Tg. Jiu; Bosnia (a residential area of mine workers, located on the left side of the road Petroşani-Petrila); some parts of the district known as Aeroport (Airport), e.g. Venus Street, Saturn Street, and Saşa. Unlike other deprived areas mentioned above, Saşa is not a workers' district; it has developed as a group of small households, mostly poor and very crowded, inhabited by Roma people (there are also some isolated traditional households). The access to Saşa is difficult, being ensured by an unmodernized road that branches of the national road on the right side of the Jiul de Est river, upstream of the Livezeni bridge. The first group of households is located approx. 1 km away from the national road. Fig. 3. Deprived urban areas1 in the Petroşani Depression: Petroşani: 1 – Colonia, 2 – Aviatorilor District, 3 – Saşa; Petrila: