A Macedonian shopping centre, Skopje City Mall, instructed the agency which provides it with cleaning staff to remove all Romani staff who worked in the food section. Skopje City Mall sent an email making the request on 9 January 2013, and requested that the Romani workers were removed by 20 January, 2013. The incident only came to light in national media reports this week.
The cleaning agency, Land Service, rejected the request. According to the media report, the shopping centre made the request following food thefts from the centre. The agency engages Roma and non-Roma workers in this section – only the Roma were targeted on the basis of their ethnicity.