We do not have a single newspaper in our mother tongue or a radio and TV program financed by the government. According to statistics, the rate of unemployment among Romanies is four times higher than is the case with the country's majority nation and in the past ten years the negative ratio has doubled. Every fifth Romany of working age is illiterate and every third has merely primary education. A fifth of all Romany families have no earnings whatsoever, while the majority barely survive by doing odd jobs in the black market sector, such as selling contraband cigarettes and similar smuggled goods or by collecting secondary materials. The number of illiterate Romanies is the best illustration of the effects discrimination against them has resulted in.
Discriminative practices are evident in the employment sphere, too.
In general, they are the bulk of the street cleaners' and grave diggers' work force in towns all over the country. Nevertheless, the most detrimental facet of the comprehensive discrimination of Romanies is without doubt the one having to do with education. According to the findings of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, merely seven per cent of Romany children attend preschool institutions, up to 37 per cent do not speak Serbian at all before enrolling in elementary school, while 46 per cent are only partially familiar with the language of the majority population before the start of their primary education. Those who go to school are subject to various humiliations on the part of some teachers and children. Researchers believe that this kind of behavior contributes to the isolation of Romany children and the high dropout rate among them.