The union of social welfare workers organised a half-hour stop-work protest on Wednesday, standing silently in front of their institutions throughout the country. Their goal, as they said, was to warn about the numerous problems in the system such as staff shortages and poor working conditions.
“Today’s protest is in response to the relevant ministry’s silence regarding our demands we have been making for more than 20 years, in which we continually warned of the exceptionally poor working conditions,” union shop steward Bozena Horvat-Alajbegovic said during the protest, organised under the motto “Can you hear our silence?”
Horvat-Alajbegovic noted that the social welfare system in Croatia is lacking 1,700 experts, including 700 social workers required in social welfare centres.
We do not have adequate working space and we appeal to local communities to urgently build premises for welfare centres where they can operate and provide quality service, she said.
“We have 200 beneficiaries to each social worker. These are people who are not capable of making their own decisions. We have children whose families are in difficult interpersonal and partner relationships. Our colleagues across Europe deal with 20 families each,” said Horvat-Alajbegovic.
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The entire social welfare system has come under harsh public criticism recently, following a shocking domestic violence case where a two-year-old girl from the town of Nova Gradiska died in hospital after being severely beaten by her mother. The director of the Nova Gradiska welfare centre, which was in charge of the family, has been sacked after a probe determined irregularities in the centre.
The case caused outrage throughout the country, and the union, claiming welfare workers were exposed to threats and attacks, expressed deep concern for their safety, saying that workers in the system suffered “irreparable damage” caused by “a lynch atmosphere and the lack of a timely response to hate speech.”
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