They sweep snow off the streets, for example, and help the elderly. "We always try to make sure these three people are those supporting large families," said Mrs. Zoltán Kékri, the mayor. She added that beside minors, pensioners and those living off welfare benefits, the population that is able to work numbers only about 100. Apart from the 13 mentioned, all of them are unemployed.

Most of them have never worked. Their parents once worked in the local agricultural cooperative or in factories in Miskolc that have since closed. On losing their jobs, most lived off disability benefits.

Current labour market regulations have done nothing to help the people of Csenyéte and others living in similar conditions.

"We wanted to go a few steps in the right direction, but we did not want to endanger our revenues," said Gábor Csizmár, the labour minister, last year, talking about the contribution discounts introduced last year. The government chose an easier path by making the discounts apply to groups that in any case found it easier to find work, like people beginning their careers, people returning from parental leave and those who had recently been dismissed. The results had little effect on the budget. According to tax authority data, discount payments were made to the employers of a total of 250 career beginners and 29 people returning from parental leave, resulting in a cost of some HUF26m.

Csizmár acknowledged that the law was weakend by the fact that employers could only claim their discount retrospectively after nine months. He said the discount was not large enough for employers to pay attention. But the government has rolled the programme out further, intrdocuing the Start Card for career beginners, which gives employers a 15 per cent social security contribution discount in the first year, rising to 25 per cent in the second. The tax office's data shows that in the first four months, 14,000 people claimed the card, which is valid for two yers, but employment offices say far fewer actually found work.

"We tell young people to go to interviews with the card in their pocket, because this icnreases their chances," said one employment centre official. It also appears that companies often preferred to hire a young person who was already in employment, despite the Start Card programme, and it is unlikely that many companies hired more people because of the programme's existence.