Peru: The Czech tourist who suffered the theft of her savings and now lives on the street of alms

A woman with a German passport arrived in Peru as a tourist in 2019. It was at that moment that he suffered a cyber robbery where his bank accounts were emptied and he lost 4,000 dollars and almost 30,000 euros. Currently, he has been begging for food for three years to survive in the parks of Lince, Lima. Hannah Aliger Burga is 78 years old. Her documents identify her with residence in Hanover, Germany, but she was born in Prague, Czech Republic. “I've been on the streets for three years, I don't have money, I don't have a job,” she says with some difficulty, not knowing the language.

The woman was found by a Panamericana Television team at the crossroads of Arequipa and Pedro Conde avenues. By proposing to go to the German embassy for help, she flatly refused.

Thanks to a translator, it was possible to learn that women have been traveling in different countries for more than 10 years to see where they can migrate. His intention is to survive on a pension of 800 dollars, something that is not possible in Europe. As if that were not enough, his lenses were spoiled and glaucoma does not allow him to see clearly. He is currently in a street situation.

When they tried to find her a refuge, no institution wanted to receive her. Only the Municipality of Lima agreed to help her to house her in a house for vulnerable people, but the foreigner had a gesture of rejection and made a fuss on public roads because she felt she was in prison. For that reason, he decided to withdraw from the premises. It is estimated that the elderly woman may suffer from mental disorders. It is also known that women are survivors of the World War.

Finally, Hannah was taken to the Lince police station to initiate a process through the Ministry for Women and to be integrated into a shelter, while the authorities tried to communicate with her relatives in Prague and Germany. Hannah's case exposes a painful issue of indigence that is not only unique to our country, but to other latitudes.

POVERTY IN THE REGION

According to a recent United Nations report, Latin America and the Caribbean is the most vulnerable region in the world in this pandemic. That health crisis has become a social crisis, bringing the rate of extreme poverty in Latin America from 13.1% of the population in 2020 to 13.8% in 2021, a 27-year decline, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reported on Thursday.

This means that the number of people in extreme poverty would have increased from 81 million to 86 million.

While it is estimated that the overall poverty rate would have fallen slightly, from 33.0% to 32.1% of the population, slightly decreasing the total number of people living in poverty from 204 to 201 million.

The greatest increases in poverty occurred in Argentina, Colombia and Peru, where they reached or exceeded 7 percentage points. In Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Paraguay, it grew by 3 to 5 percentage points and in Bolivia, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, it grew by less than 2 percentage points. The only country in the region that experienced a decrease in poverty and extreme poverty in 2020 was Brazil.

“Despite the economic recovery experienced in 2021, the estimated relative and absolute levels of poverty and extreme poverty have remained above those recorded in 2019, reflecting the continuation of the social crisis. The crisis has also highlighted the vulnerability of a large part of the population in the middle-income strata, characterized by low levels of contributory social protection contributions and very low coverage of non-contributory social protection,” the annual report states Social Panorama of Latin America 2021.

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