Radio România Internațional

Tag: penitentiary

  • Alternative measures to imprisonment

    Alternative measures to imprisonment

    Several days ago the US Department of State published its annual human rights report, criticising Romania for the conditions in its penitentiaries, which are overcrowded and below the standards set by the Council of Europe. In the absence of measures to address the situation, the forum in Strasbourg has threatened Bucharest with consistent fines, which Romanian taxpayers are by no means eager to pay.



    Last year Romania passed a law reducing prison sentences for people having faced improper detention conditions. Under this law, for every 30 days spent in improper prison conditions since 2012, inmates have 6 days taken off their sentences.



    And this is not the only measure taken by the authorities in this respect. On Monday, the Chamber of Deputies legal committee endorsed a draft law on alternative measures to prison sentences, which are not to apply to those who have committed violent crimes, to repeat offenders or those serving time for influence peddling and bribery.



    Under the bill, inmates having served one-fifth of sentences of up to 5 years may switch to house arrest. Another alternative would be for them to do time at home on weekdays and stay in a detention centre on weekends. Two other proposals stipulate 20-day cuts for each scientific paper written while in prison, and house arrest for those with sentences under a year. Here is with more on the aforementioned bills from the Social Democratic MP Eugen Nicolicea, who is also the committees chairman:



    Eugen Nicolicea: “If a judge has given a sentence of less than one year, it means the offence is not a major one and the offender poses no major social threats. Serious offenders cannot benefit from these provisions.



    Rightist MP Stelian Ion, from Save Romania Union, has voiced the oppositions dissatisfaction with the laws:



    Stelian Ion: “We must also think about the honest people in this country, who are very frustrated whenever they see that offenders are getting away with their crimes so easily. On the other hand, criminals are indirectly encouraged to carry on, knowing that they may rely on such a lax legislation.



    The bills are to be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for approval.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

  • March 12, 2018 UPDATE

    March 12, 2018 UPDATE

    HEALTHCARE – The Romanian Healthcare Minister, Sorina Pintea, said on Monday there are no reasons for a strike, given that incomes in the public healthcare sector did not drop. The statement comes after trade unions in the sector announced a protest going as far as to an all-out strike. Healthcare employees are unhappy with the new pay scheme and ask for a 25% increase in basic salaries concurrently with the scrapping of the 30% ceiling on bonuses. In other news, Healthcare Minister Sorina Pintea announced that within 2 weeks Romania would receive 10,000 doses of immunoglobulin, with further doses expected from Italy and the USA. Bucharest has recently asked for aid from EU and NATO countries to solve the immunoglobulin crisis triggered by last years withdrawal from the Romanian market of the producers that had covered over 80% of the demand. Romania needs 956 kilos of immunoglobulin per year.





    PENITENTIARY – The number of prisoners in Romanian penitentiaries is around 22,900, while the system employs some 12,800 special civil servants, the Justice Minister Tudorel Toader told a press conference on Monday. He added that the number of prisoners is decreasing, and so is the number of repeat offenders. However, Bucharest should not wait for the issue of penitentiary overcrowding to get solved through a natural decrease in the number of people sentenced to prison. According to Tudorel Toader, Romania will build 2 new, modern penitentiaries with a capacity of 1,000 prisoners each, and an initial and continuing training centre for penitentiary staff will be set up in Bucharest.




    DIPLOMACY – The 3-party meeting organised in Bucharest on Monday and bringing together the foreign ministers of Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, was an opportunity to reaffirm commitment to strengthening the European project, the Romanian FM Teodor Melescanu said. According to the Romanian official, talks have focused on relevant topics, such as the Western Balkans, the Eastern Neighbourhood, the Black Sea region, the Danube region and the Middle East. In turn, the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Ekaterina Zakharieva, has expressed hopes for Romanias and Bulgarias Schengen accession, a goal supported by Greece, according to its Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias. On the other hand, Minister Teodor Melescanu has announced a 4-party meeting in the forthcoming period, with government officials from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Serbia taking part. Also this year, a joint Romanian-Bulgarian government meeting will be held, to discuss primarily the interconnection options for the 2 countries.




    DEFENCE – The defence ministers of the Bucharest 9 member countries convened in the Romanian capital city on Monday. For 3 days, officials from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, as well as NATO representatives and US State Department officials will be talking about boosting NATOs defence and deterrence posture, particularly on the eastern flank. Other topics include the adjustment of NATOs command structure, the risks and threats coming from the Alliances eastern neighbourhood as well as means to strengthen resilience on the Baltic Sea – Black Sea axis. Romania offered to host a new NATO command centre, but a decision will be made at the Alliances summit due in July in Brussels.





    EXERCISE – Nearly 900 Romanian and foreign troops are taking part between March 12 and 23, in DACIAN LANCER 18, a multinational military exercise held in Brasov County, central Romania. The exercise is designed to help assess the Multinational Division Southeast Headquarters in Bucharest. An element of the NATO Force Command structure, the headquarters in Bucharest is a high-readiness command activated in December 2015, and is staffed by military personnel from Romania and 15 other NATO member countries.





    MOLDOVA – The 2 largest cities in the Republic of Moldova, the capital Chisinau and the northern city of Balti, will be having early local elections on May 20, under a resolution made by the Central Electoral Commission on Monday. This is seen as a test for this autumns parliamentary election. The mayors of Chisinau and Balti resigned in February. The pro-Russian populist mayor of Balti, Renato Usatyi, has been in Russia for more than a year, and is currently prosecuted in a case involving the murder of a businessman. In Chisinau, the Liberal, pro-Western mayor Dorin Chirtoaca is in turn subject to corruption accusations in a criminal investigation, and was suspended from office in the summer of 2017.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

  • February 9, 2018

    February 9, 2018

    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.





    translated by bill

  • August 8, 2017

    August 8, 2017

    PARLIAMENT – In Romania, the Senate and Chamber of Deputies convene, as of today, in a special parliamentary session. The agenda includes the emergency ordinances that the Government formed by the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Romania passed last week, and which need to be endorsed by Parliament before they can take effect. These legislative acts concern the capping of special pensions in the defence, public order and judicial sectors, as well as of child allowances, and the raise of police staff salaries. The Liberals, in opposition, argue that the legal requirements for the Chamber of Deputies to convene have not been met, and threaten to notify the Constitutional Court in this respect.




    UNIONS – The Romanian Justice Minister, Tudorel Toader, had a meeting today with representatives of penitentiary trade unions. He said he would personally coordinate the National Penitentiary Agency and would have weekly meetings with the representatives of prison personnel to find solutions to their demands. Trade union leader Sorin Dumitraşcu said the Justice Minister promised to have a meeting this week with the Prime Minister, in order to discuss the granting of up to 15% bonuses to penitentiary personnel, who have not been included in the categories of public sector staff benefiting from pay raises. Unionists also demand the improvement of work standards, solutions to the issue of personnel shortage, the reorganisation of prisons and the building of new ones. Penitentiary employees intend to stage street protests next week, over inadequate work conditions. They have been on a work-to-rule strike since August 1. We remind you that the improvement of detention conditions in Romania is a requirement issued by the European Court for Human Rights.




    INFLATION – The National Bank of Romania adjusted the inflation forecast for end-2017 from 1.6% up to 1.9%, the central bank governor Mugur Isarescu announced on Tuesday, when he presented the Inflation Report. For next year as well, the National Bank raised its inflation forecast to 3.2%, up from the previously estimated rate of 3.1%. Isarescu explained that these changes were triggered by the fiscal policy, by the increase in foodstuff prices as well as by the political tensions in June, which temporarily affected the exchange rate for the national currency.




    DEFENCE – The Romanian Defence Minister, Adrian Ţuţuianu, and Gen. Nicolae Ciucă, General Chief of Staff, had talks in Bucharest with the head of the Alabama National Guard, Major Gen. Sheryl Gordon, who is on a visit to Romania. The talks approached the regional security environment, particularly at the Black Sea, the strategic partnership between the US and Romania, and the planned equipment purchases for the Romanian Army. Ţuţuianu has recently announced that the Plan for military equipment procurement has been approved, and reiterated that Romania was committed to earmarking 2% of the GDP to the defence sector, as it has undertaken in its capacity as a NATO member state. During his visit to Romania, the recently appointed chief of the ANG, Major Gen. Sheryl Gordon, will take part in an exercise of Romanian mountain troops and will visit the “Getica Joint Training Centre in Cincu, Brasov County.



    WEATHER – The weather is hot in the south-west and south of Romania, while in the hilly and mountain areas in the south and the centre rainfalls, thunderstorms and strong wind are reported. The highs of the day range between 24 and 36 degrees Celsius, with a 26-degree reading in Bucharest at noon. Weather experts warn that as of Wednesday a new heat wave will reach Romania, with temperatures going up to 38-39 degrees Celsius. Moreover, for the next 2 weeks meteorologists expect the weather to alternate between highs of 34 degrees Celsius and rainfalls in most regions, especially in the mountains.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

  • September 25, 2016

    September 25, 2016

    MIGRATION – Romania is the second-largest contributor, after Germany, to FRONTEX missions, the Interior Minister Ioan-Dragoş Tudorache said at an international summit on “Migration along the Balkan Route held on Saturday in Vienna. In 2016, 365 Romanian border police took part in such missions. Until the end of the year, 14 border police troops will be part of a joint mission to support the Bulgarian authorities, in which EU countries have increased the resources deployed on Bulgarias land borders with Turkey and Serbia. On the sidelines of the meeting in Vienna, Minister Ioan-Dragoş Tudorache discussed with his Serbian counterpart Nebojsa Stefanovic aspects related to the cooperation on the common border with respect to migrant groups and to the need to implement the EU – Serbia readmission agreement. Bucharest reiterated its interest in organising joint Romanian-Serb border patrols as soon as possible. Attending the meeting in Vienna were EU member states and Western Balkan countries affected by the migration crisis over the past year, namely Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and Hungary. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel pleaded for stepping up efforts to curb illegal migration.




    PROTESTS – In Romania, penitentiary workers around the country will initiate protests on Monday, the head of a relevant trade union has announced. The demands include the improvement of working conditions, the employment of an adequate number of staff, addressing salary imbalances and the resignation of the Justice Minister, Raluca Pruna, accused of underperformance. The unionists claim the system needs another 8,000 employees.



    RADIRO – The agenda of the International Festival of Radio Orchestras, RadiRo, includes on Sunday a concert by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, which performs every year in Oslo during the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony. The orchestra, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, accompanies the pianist Vadym Kholodenko. RadiRo will come to an end on Saturday, October 1, and the concerts are broadcast live in the European Broadcasting Union and the Asia-Pacific platform of public and private radio broadcasters as well. Currently in its third edition, RadiRo is the only large-scale European event exclusively devoted to radio orchestras, and it is organised by Radio Romania.




    BOSNIA – Bosnian Serbs vote today, in a referendum, on a proposal to keep January 9 as the national holiday, in spite of a ruling by Bosnias Supreme Court. The Court had ruled that the holiday discriminates between Bosnian Muslims and Catholics, which is why it ought to be changed. The BBC mentions that on January 9, 1992 the Serbs decided to create their own state within Bosnia – Republika Srpska – fuelling an ethnic conflict that left nearly 100,000 people dead.




    SYRIA – The UN Security Council convenes today to discuss the military campaign of the Syrian government against the rebel-controlled Aleppo. The UK, France and the US called on Russia to persuade their Syrian allies to give up random bombings. The British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, hinted that last weeks deadly attack on a humanitarian convoy might have been a deliberate action of Russian aircraft, the BBC reports. Russias Foreign Minister, Serghei Lavrov, said that resuming a peace deal in Syria cannot be conditional only on unilateral concessions by his country, but requires a collective effort of all parties.




    TENNIS – The Romanian tennis player Monica Niculescu (55 WTA), was defeated in three sets by Spains Lara Arruabarrena (90 WTA), in the final of the tournament in Seoul on Sunday. In the semi-finals of the competition, Lara Arruabarrena had beat another Romanian player, Patricia Ţig.