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HN: One in three Czech homeless people have job

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Prague, Aug 6 (CTK) – About one third of the homeless people in the Czech Republic have a job, though not as lucrative as to enable them to regain housing, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes yesterday, citing a survey made by non-profit organisations.
Only about a half of the working homeless people do so legally, according to the survey conducted by the Hope, Salvation Army and Caritas Czech Republic organisations.
This is about 5,000 of the 30,000 homeless people who live in the 10.5-million Czech Republic, according to the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry, HN writes.
The rest accept occasional short-time jobs without a work contract and usually poorly remunerated, it says.
They mostly work at construction sites, as street cleaners, vegetable growers and leaflet distributors.
It has become fashionable to hire homeless people as security personnel to guard buildings, Jan Kadlec, head of the Prague branch of the Hope organisation, is quoted as saying.
However, about 70 percent of the working homeless people only earn about 5,000 crowns a month, 10 percent earn 7,000 and only 4 percent more than 12,000 crowns, said Miroslav Bartak, an expert from the university in Usti nad Labem, north Bohemia.
“Now and then these people even illegally spend nights at their workplace in order to keep their job and save some money,” Kadlec said.
The average gross monthly wage in the Czech Republic stands at 25,300 crowns.
Even the working homeless people cannot do without welfare benefits.
About 42 percent of the homeless people have applied for a welfare benefit at least once in their life.
A total of 17 percent of them receive disability pension, HN writes.
Some town halls have started providing help to the homeless.
For example, the Prague 9 district town hall has offered them free accommodation in unused porta cabins outside the residential quarters, in exchange for their promise to tidy up the place and its surroundings.
Forty people live in the 20 porta cabins now, Prague 9 Mayor Jiri Houdek told HN.
($1=24.769 crowns)

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