Lucas Dudi has no complaints about life in Glasgow. "My accommodation is good. Everything is good. There is no work in Slovakia. There is work in Glasgow, and so I came here."

Like many migrant workers from Slovakia, Dudi is employed in low-status food-handling, paid at rates that do not appeal to many Scots but are attractive to incomers from a country where unemployment sits at around 10%. He works in potato processing. Fellow Slovakians are employed in meat-packing plants, other food-processing jobs, and car washes.

But Dudi, who shares a comfortable ground-floor corner flat in Govanhill with his family, is one of the luckier ones. Thousands of Slovakian workers and their families have arrived in Glasgow since 2004, when their country joined the EU. Most are Roma - ethnic gypsies from the very east of Slovakia, fleeing persecution and exclusion as well as unemployment.

The challenge posed to social services on the south side of Glasgow by the influx has been immense. Migrant families have placed a strain on the NHS and schools, and have also posed a challenge for the police.

Through partnership working, most of these agencies say great progress has been made in tackling the most serious problems. But others warn that the Slovakian Roma continue to put up with overcrowding, "slum" accommodation and exploitation from employment agencies.

Paradoxically, as a group they make few direct demands on local services, because Roma people tend to be deeply suspicious of authority and have low expectations of social support. But they have brought significant special problems. By contrast with, for example, Polish migrant workers - who tend to be well organised and whose numbers include more English speakers - Slovakian Roma are excluded at home and used to steering clear of government agencies. As a result, when the first families arrived in Scotland, they sought out out neither schools nor immunisation for their children. Most agencies struggled to communicate with them, and translation remains the biggest problem.

Different agencies make different estimates of the numbers who have come here, ranging from around 1000 individuals up to 3000 or perhaps more. Most are in privately rented accommodation, often of dubious quality - a situation exacerbated by overcrowding. Outreach workers have encountered a family of 14 living in a two-bedroom flat, and other flats housing three families at once. This creates problems with sanitation, in particular plumbing and refuse disposal.

Poor quality it may be, but the housing doesn't come cheap. Some are paying as much as £650 a month for a basic flat, and such homes are often tied to employment, with accommodation withdrawn if work dries up.

Anne Lear, director of Govanhill Housing Association, is alarmed by the failure to address the conditions endured by Slovakian migrants. Lear, whose organisation has refurbished some 2000 tenement properties in the area, fears much good work could be undone if old, unimproved tenements are allowed to continue to deteriorate.

The housing association is carrying out a detailed survey of one of four key street blocks that provides homes for most of the Slovakian migrant worker population, within a border formed by Calder Street, Dixon Avenue, Westmoreland Street and Annette Street. They include some very poor properties, Lear says. "We still have scenes of poverty comparable to 1960s slums," she says.

"In some houses there are appalling conditions. People are still paying up to £650 a month for an unimproved flat that might have cockroaches, rats, bed bugs or a leaking roof, or where the cooker has to be used in lieu of heating."

Much of this is not new, she argues. Conditions for existing residents were very hard before the latest arrivals. "We reckon there are 600 unimproved flats in the area. The problems aren't new but the population change makes it more difficult."

Govanhill's base population is about 10,000 people, Lear says. So, depending on whether there are 1000, 1500 or 2000 Slovakian Roma here, that is an increase of between 10% and 20%. "If you have a 20% increase in people using schools, social work, housing and so on, there are bound to be pressures," she says. But it is housing that is key to tackling the issue: "We'd like to see central and local government make a commitment to upgrading the remaining tenements."

You don't have to look long in the closes in streets on either side of Allison Street, Govanhill's main thoroughfare, to uncover pretty squalid conditions. One close is open to the skies, with rain falling on to stairs and down walls, and a group of pigeons in residence on the top landing. Much of the stair is caked with bird excrement.

Piles of rubbish, discarded toys and leaking soil pipes are not uncommon in back courts. Some closes have smashed windows all the way up, with stair railings broken and "secured" with plywood. Others have signs up warning that council officers have laid rat poison.

The Slovakians also share their closes with some less desirable local residents. Graffiti indicates that the sea of discarded needles in one close has probably been left by indigenous addicts.

The council has difficulty tackling some of the overcrowding as residents, for fear of losing their homes, will often collude with landlords by saying all those living within a given flat are related, sidestepping the need for it to be registered as a house of multiple occupancy.

Communication problems are slowly being addressed. Govanhill Housing Association has engaged a Slovakian student from Glasgow University to do outreach work. Meanwhile, two Slovakian workers, Lydia Zelmanova and Marcela Adamova, were employed by Oxfam and the charity Glasgow Braendam Link to help migrant families access services and to offer them emergency advice. Although Zelmanova returned to Slovakia last month, the positions have been formalised and taken over by the local Community Health Care Partnership, employed by the NHS, and her replacement is being sought.

Before she left, Zelmanova told The Herald that gaps in the system were leading to exploitation and benefit fraud. Although the posts are mainly intended to provide a parallel arm to health and social services, much of the advice she offered related to employment, she said. "People will pay to come over and get work for several weeks, but then there will be none. They are told that if they want a second job they will have to pay £50-200," she explained.

Zelmanova added that what she called "white horse" frauds were common. Workers whose employment has ended are sent home, she said, while gangmasters continue to claim benefits such as child tax credits. Adamova said several such cases had been reported to the authorities.

Such problems are best tackled by giving people lessons in English so they are less dependent on their exploiters, the Slovakian workers say. These are now being offered, but demand exceeds provision.

Adamova said accommodation is also a problem that is hard to tackle, partly because migrants tolerate conditions British tenants would not. "Many Slovakians would not say they were overcrowded, because it is common with all of us for three generations to live in two rooms."

However, the drop-in workers do believe landlords are exploitative. Many tenants have no written agreements and rents are high. "If work ends, the agency will not pay for rent,"Adamova explained. "In the end we have homeless people".

Mike Dailly, principal solicitor of Govan Law Centre, says that while it isn't the whole answer, the law should still be able to make life a lot better for migrant workers. That is why plans are advanced for a law centre in Govanhill, he says. "Everyone is ripping them off. Lawyers don't have all the solutions but people have rights.

"There is a lot of manipulation and the Roma are putting up with slum living conditions. A lot of people in the statutory agencies are well aware of the extent of the problems. These are members of an ethnic people who have really been scapegoated over the years and there is no way we should be allowing this to go on in Glasgow."

Plans for the law centre have significant backing and it could be up and running in a couple of months if those behind it can secure sufficient financial support.

While the centre will help Slovakian migrants, it would be for everyone in the area, Dailly stresses. "It would be for everybody who meets our criteria of being in need." Such an approach could help stave off local tensions, he argues.

One of the challenges for police has been the different social attitudes of the Roma and other Govanhill residents. In particular, many of the Slovakian families like to gather on the streets in the early evening and later at night, causing no harm but upsetting some other residents.

"It is all of these things together that create social tension and you get people fighting," says Dailly. "The community can end up going into decline if this is not addressed."

stephen.naysmith@theherald.co.uk