Operation Cover UP

Romania is just a tad smaller than New Zealand, but it has over 22 million people, and 55% of them live beneath the poverty line.

Untill 1989 a communist country, which left Romania like most other communist countries emerging from that era, with a legacy of gross environmental mismanagement causing extreme suffering and poverty. Agricultural over use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that have seeped into the groundwater, which is the only source of drinking water. The resulting high levels of atrazin and nitrates/nitrites in the water causes miscarrges and intestinal diseases hospitalizing many children.

Communist built industrial steel, iron and chemical plants have leaked and dumped toxic waste into the ground water for 40 years. Heavy commercial shipping traffic using inland Danube River ports, cyanide and heavy metal waste from minning, leaking chemical stockpiles have increased soil and water pollution. According to European Union legislation Romania's water should not even be used to bath in.

Adding to Romania's general poverty this year, six separate floods have hit the country destroying thousands of homes, schools, bridges, crops and severely damaging all infrastructure networks.

A recent EU report estimates cleaning up Romainia's water supply to cost an estimated $US20 billion, which of course, the cash-straped Romaina government does not have. The Romanian government stated in 2005 that its aim was for half its population to have access to safe drinking water by 2015. Today, only 18% of Romanians have access to safe drinking water and sanitary facilities.

Infant mortality is 29 per 1000 births but increases during the winter months due to the lack of heating supplies.

All blankets, quilts, bedding, warm clothing, stationary and sewing machines kindly donated by all New Zealanders before August 2006 will be shipped to Romanian orphanages.