Hunedoara's Story

The city of Hunedoara with a population of 78,000 is predominantly poor with small pockets of slightly better off areas.  At the time of the Romanian revolution in 1989, it was no doubt hoped that overthrowing Communism would lead to greater prosperity for all in Romania.  Ironically, this didn't prove to be the case for Hunedoara, which until that point was a vibrant and prosperous industrial town, supported by the Steel industry.

At that time, there were 30,000 employed in the industry in the town and the heat from the Steel Works furnaces was inovatively harnessed and used to heat water supplies for the whole town.  Many of the city's districts, including Micro 7 where I have been based this week, were built specifically for the families of Steer workers.  So how did the collapse of Communism result in the city becoming so poor you might wonder.

It's simply because the Steel Works were being heavily, if not completely subsidised by the government.  It was a Communist principal that every adult should have a job, and if they didn't work they would be sent to jail.  So jobs were provided by the state, it seems, no matter what the cost or viability.  These were times when Romanian's had everything rationed for buying, including fuel, food, clothing, electricity which was only allowed for three hours a day, the same with the only choice of state propaganda tv and so on.  When Communism was overthrown, Romania was one of the only countries in the world no  t to posses a national debt, but the cost of that was extremely high for it's citizens, with very poor living conditions and facilities all over the country.  Buy contrast, the Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu built for himself one of the largest palaces in the world.  After the revolution, the large subsidies and poor management of the Hunedoara Steel industry stopped, and throughout the nineties, production reduced dramatically by a total of 90% by today.  The two most devastating results were that there becam mass unemployment in the city with many people being plunged into further poverty, and the loss of the water heating system because of the downturn in Steel production.

Even today, that's why many homes in this area still can't afford to heat the water in their homes and live well below the pverty line.  In total there has been the loss of 28,000 Steel jobs alone in Hunedoara.