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As narrated in in.gr, you cannot afford to isolate yourself or lose your day job. In case he wakes up badly, he will choose to go to work “and while he can put up with there.”
An estimated 120,000 people cross NATO Avenue from Athens every day to work in the West Attica industrial zone.
The pandemic has highlighted the arbitrariness of employers and the violated rights of contract workers, most of whom are immigrants from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Small prefabricated houses can be found around large factories and logistics warehouses, where migrant workers live in less than 40 square meters.
Mornings no longer take the usual route to work in the middle of the quarantine, nor will they head to the nearest bus stop.
They will meet the rest of the workers at some point, from where they will be picked up by a van, or at best a bus, which can carry up to 13 people on a route to the factories.
On Friday, in the Mandra industrial zone, police had “set up a carter” in front of a factory, reportedly waiting for immigrants to go to school.
It was after 10 at night when the authorities began imposing fines on workers who did not even bring the required ERGANI form with them, as their boss had… covered them with the previous quarantine form.
Serious complaints
According to complaints, in many cases the employers did not follow the measures of the General Secretariat of Civil Protection, which asked the managers to test employees after the summer holidays, before returning to work.
However, even more serious accusations speak of cases of concealment in the factories, under the pretext of medical confidentiality.
The physical presence in the workplace is one of the most favorable factors for the spread of the coronavirus. However, telecommuting is not an option for all employees, especially those on the “front line” whose absence from work is equivalent to a missed day job.
© Dimitris Michalakis
These workers are deprived of the right to get sick, the right to quarantine, the right to “stay home.”
The first large dispersal in the area took place in a well-known recycling plant, in spring, where of the 50 migrant workers, 25, that is, 50%, tested positive for the coronavirus. Of course, the factory was forced to “freeze” its production for two weeks.
© Dimitris Michalakis
The anxiety of tomorrow
A few meters down from the Genocide Plaza, in a small corner store where once her clients and friends who came to have coffee together heard the sound of the cash register, Ms. Emorfili sits and waits for it to pass quarantine behind the counter. .
Her psychology, as she describes it to me, has reached the Tartars. From store to home and from home to store, what they managed to do after years of work, from day job to laiki.
“I’m sitting here behind the counter, wearing the mask and watching.” I have nothing to fear, “Emorfili tells me, whose main fear is not so much the coronavirus as the financial difficulties that arose as a result of the shutdown and the pandemic crisis.
Most of the residents of the neighborhood purchase products from his store. One of them is Ms. Eleni, a native of Georgia who is experiencing quarantine and the other eight members of the house, her husband, their children and grandchildren.
“We went and left a little paradise, to stay here to boil here, in the stench and escape.” If the war had not started, we would never have come here.
© Dimitris Michalakis
The only income in the house comes from her husband, who also works in one of the factories in the area. However, her fear of the possibility of transmitting the virus home from the workplace does not increase, because, as she says, tests are often carried out.
“Every day, twice a day, they patrol and warn us not to go out. But what exactly to do in seven days? What benefit will we get from this?
What the inventory showed
According to the 2011 census data, West Attica had a larger household size in all of its municipalities compared to the Attica region average. With a corresponding average household size of 2.47 in the Attica region, Aspropyrgos has 3.26, followed by Fili with 3.18, Megara with 2.9, Elefsina with 2.88 and Mandra-Eidyllia with 2.83 .
To open the roads, to sell the scrap
On the upper side of NATO Avenue, which looks like an informal border, a cart made of a piece of rough sheet metal and three rickety wheels suddenly covered the sound of seagulls from the top of the landfill looking for food like vultures.
Just 22 kilometers from Athens, poverty, indifference and social stigma replaced humanity with a landfill.
The clock read 9:30 in the morning. it was the smoke from the makeshift kitchens of the settlements and the garbage that burned, as if the sun had been blocked throughout the camp.
He puts the car aside, greets me, and walks over to me.
His hands and eyes are tired. he lacked a mask and gloves, but not his smile and kindness. “You’re a doctor?” he asks me anxiously. “They told us they’d bring in doctors today. Let’s see what happens. ‘You see we’re here.”
The thin layer of the mask was not enough to prevent the strong smell of burn and rot from reaching the nostrils.
This feeling combined with the image of endless abandonment hits you right in the stomach.
In … new life
The graffiti on the half-ruined walls attest to the location of Camp New Life.
Cowardly – the children had started to leave the landfill’s dirt road without leaving their “houses”, faithful to the orders of the authorities.
The dogs, without any special vivacity, gave life to the dirt roads that “separated” the prefabricated huts.
Giovanka leaves her house and is followed by her four grandchildren, no older than 7 years.
His life and “quarantine” is limited to a wooden building, two beds and a stove for the winter.
In front of the “house”, the water ran through a long hose that they used to bathe, wash their hands and clean the patio.
“Look, we’re good!” he tells me while following a gurgling laugh. “What are we missing? We have our home, we have our stove, my kids hang out here, what more could we want?”
The Nea Zoi gypsy community lives in the shadow of the landfill, next to the garbage but also thanks to them.
Most of the men work at the landfill, where they collect scrap metal or recyclables which they then sell, trying to find a daily solution to their survival problem.
The women were in the middle of their housework, and most of them swept the backyards of houses with bleach.
In a small alley, a group of dwarf friends has lit a fire in a tin bucket, gathered around it, and warmed up.
Your mind for the child
Maria, with the mop still in hand, says goodbye to me. His daughter, Chryssa, with a pencil and notebook in hand.
María’s family, as well as other gypsies from Nea Zoi, were forced to sleep with their children in the summer and in the middle of a pandemic among the ruins left by the municipality, when she decided to demolish their huts without warning.
Gathering wood and whatever else they could find, they built aron-aron to avoid winter and rain.
With a bed, a sofa and clothes lying on the floor on the frozen concrete and next to a small stove, they spend their afternoons at home.
The schools closed and their children could not attend classes through the telework system. Buying a tablet might not be a priority, while definitely connecting through mobile costs.
“With the money my husband earns during the day, we buy the food for the day. I have four children, how else can we feed them? My little boy is asking for money to go get chocolate. Where can I find them to give them to you? In this difficult situation, they could somehow help us. Bring us masks or even a packet of spaghetti for the kids. I can cheat the hunger, I will drink coffee and my appetite will be cut, but are you?
Children at the landfill
The same pattern was used in most homes. Spouses in the landfill or in some of the surrounding industries are at risk of transmitting the virus to the family.
The closest hospital is located in Elefsina and the cost of transportation will be evident in your… daily income.
Most of the children solved the exercises and wrote their last report in conjunction with the school closings, their books waiting dusty.
Only two boys from the entire camp made an appointment every day at 8 in the morning to connect to the distance learning platform, through the tablet provided by the school.
“A month of quarantine, a month of spaghetti,” sang a child. Some of the children still had the masks they had been given at school, but they had lost them while playing.
They miss school, classes, classmates, and their teacher, but they know their limits are limited to camp.
Mr. Tasos had just arrived at the camp. He had gone down to the Aspropyrgos market to buy the basics with his grandson. His legs have left him for years, with diabetes that afflicts him.
On a sheet of paper where his grandchildren have written their data, without knowing the letters himself, he manages to move in his car.
He is very careful, as he emphasizes, constantly circulating with his mask, since his health problems do not allow him to “play with them”.
On Saturday, EODY mobile units conducted a test in the Nea Zoi area, where residents of the camp arrived at the site along with their babies and children for testing.
“Let’s finally let the roads open, sell the scrap,” a woman was heard saying.
However, there were also small complaints that the hard blockade preceded the tests, as the government had not previously taken the necessary measures for the area. “Now you remember us,” commented one man.
Trash for some, a treasure for others
A few kilometers later, a group of young children had made an appointment outside a friend’s house to go to the “area” where they played as they called her “survivor”.
His toys include a piece of wood, a thick pillow and a small bucket, with small mounds of burned garbage to complete the image of the area.
“We have asked the municipality thousands of times to come clean the specific plot. They were never interested in doing anything, ”explains a lady who went out to her balcony while doing housework.
“That they at least wear masks for the children.” They play here all day. “
The epidemiological situation in West Attica
According to the latest data, a total of 1,834 cases have been registered in West Attica, of which 585 correspond to the municipality of Aspropyrgos, 377 to Elefsina, 266 to Megara and 447 to Fili.
However, according to the latest data, at the moment in the Municipality of Aspropyrgos there are 179 active cases, while in the Municipality of Elefsina 78 and in the Municipality of Mandra another 25.
The government proceeded with a “tough” lockdown on the West Attica areas, however, it did not take into account the fact that telecommuting and quarantine are not options for some households and employees.
The presence of a large number of people in a place, be it a home, a workplace or a coexistence of people who cannot afford to support their monks, favors the great spread of the coronavirus by making the measures implemented in incomplete area.
Fear of the corona virus in areas of West Attica “coexists” with financial insecurity, with residents counting down the days for the removal of the local lockdown.
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