National Press Review, 20 May

How the NLA state subsidized houses reach the open market, at their real price, and how Romanian doctors add to their revenue by working, on weekends, for hospitals in Western Europe - are the main topics in today’s newspapers.

‘The state builds cheap for customers. The National Housing Agency takes from the poor and gives to the rich’, the România Liberă headlines.

How you can win over 70,0000 EUR without moving one finger? One of the networks of this ‘wonder’ business is the one used by tens of people who obtained an apartment with the help of the National Housing Agency, subsidized by the state, which now they have put on sale at the market price. Among the beneficiaries of these homes – the România Liberă România Liberă adds, there are state secretaries, ministers’ counselors and wealthy businessmen.

All of it happens on a real estate market about which the AdevărulAdevărul says it has thawed out in March. After the prices have constantly fallen during the last two years, Romanians are beginning to be interested again in purchasing a new home.

Public notaries have authenticated in March this year the most purchase contract in the ;ast eight months.

Also in the Adevărul – ‘At the table of truth’, to be more precise – doctor Raed Arafat is invited, sub secretary of state for the Minister of Health. The man everyone knows and appreciates as being the creator of SMURD states that getting the Romanian health care system on track can only be done by a technocrat with solid political support, because of influential interest groups.

‘If I’m doing reform, they cut me off’, Raed Arafat speaks openly; additionally, underfunding the system directly affects the quality of medical care’.

To this declaration, the two-pages article in the Evenimentul Zilei, entitled ‘A Romanian doctor commuting between two worlds’, serves as an argument.

A Romanian pediatrician is adding to his revenue by practicing medicine both in Romania and the West: during the week he works in a Romanian hospital, and some weekend is on call in Belgian hospitals. Money is one thing, but in addition there is also the satisfaction to work in a system not necessarily well equipment and modern…but a normal one.

Feral horses in the Delta – salami for the Italians, appear today in the Jurnalul NaţionalJurnalul Naţional , which notes that there is a war around them between several camps.

There are the ones defending the animals and the tourism in the area, and then there are those who defend themselves by tomorrow’s trouble. The villagers. They have suddenly remembered each colt ever abandoned on the field and go to the City Hall to claim them back and take money from the bargain makers. Until they were worth nothing, feral horses were of no interest for the locals. Now they say: ‘The ones in Texas as feral horses. Ours are just ours’.

Translated by: Manuela Stancu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University