THE Romanian community in Scotland has hit out at a controversial Channel 4 documentary which focused on poverty stricken gypsy immigrants looking for a better life in the UK.
The second part of the documentary, The Romanians Are Coming, due to be shown tonight, claims to feature more “middle class” immigrants, including a care worker working in a nursing home, but the Scottish community says it does not go far enough in showing the diverse work force in the UK who have come from the eastern European country.
The Scotland-based Romanian diaspora have added their names to thousands of signatures on national petitions and say they are planning a protest if the next programme in the series does not show what they describe as a “more balanced” view of people who are travelling from the former Communist country to Britain.
The programme, which was first broadcast last week, has experienced a backlash in Romania. Of the people featured in the documentary, the vast majority were Roma gypsies, who live in extreme poverty in Romania, often in ghettoised communities. Roma make up around 3.3 per cent of the Romanian population.
