MORE THAN 30 000 GUEST WORKERS FROM SLOVAKIA

While before the EU enlargement only less than four thousand Slovakian citizens found employment in Hungary, now their number has increased to more than 30 000, the Slovakian economic magazine ’Hodspodarské Noviny’ claims.

Most of them are employed in Komárom, Győr, and Sopron and their regions while in Northern Hungary their number is low because of the high unemployment rate there. Most of the guest workers are native Hungarians in Slovakia who are attracted by the 30 pc higher wages. In the Southern part of Slovakia where mainly Hungarians live there is a 20 pc unempoyment rate.

The Slovakian Ministry of the Interior wants to restore the law before the mid-90's years about the use of names in marriage registrations for women. Hungarian women have not been obliged to use the Slovakian suffix ’ová’ attached to the name of their husbands. László A. Nagy, chairman of the committee of human rights in the Slovakian parliament finds this measure scandalous and contrary to the principle of the equality of opportunities because it is a human right to have a name written according to the rules of one’s mother tongue.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó