Contact Admin. Hopping on the spot at platform 19 of Radom bus station, dressed in electric-blue drainpipe jeans, Katarzyna tries to keep warm despite the icy drizzle and to make light of her imminent departure from her son David, as he tucks into the ice-cream she has bought him. David is taken home by his grandfather, who will look after him until his mother returns in June. Katarzyna, one of a very vaguely estimated two million Poles who are living and working abroad, has been doing a similar stint for 12 years.
But in a study last week the World Bank warned that towns across eastern Europe , like Radom β which lies about 75 miles south of Warsaw β are growing prematurely old due to the extensive migration that has taken place in recent years, coupled with drastically falling birthrates.
A glance at the statistics is enough to realise the demographic squeeze that is already taking place in Radom and will only worsen as its population both ages and shrinks. If the trend continues, according to the study, it will have a huge impact on pensions, the public purse and economic growth.
Statisticians have called Radom, with its , inhabitants and its roots in the middle ages, one of the fastest-shrinking towns in Poland and eastern Europe. Wlodzimierz Wolski has often been the one who has been forced to pick up the pieces when families have been separated as parents disappear to work abroad. Just two days later the mother had returned. The father is continuing to work on a UK building site and to send money back to his family.
In the corridor where scores of job hunters β most of whom, Bakula said, are invariably unqualified or wrongly skilled β sit looking downtrodden and bored, the green screen flickers above them with an apparent abundance of fresh work opportunities, from pharmacists, to car mechanics, welders to turners β all vacancies that are hard to fill. Government initiatives have tried to encourage workers to return to Poland. A returnee programme called Powroty Returns , which offered incentives for people to come back and use their skills in Poland, was β even the government admits β a flop.
