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GENEVA (AFP) – In one of the most expensive cities in the world, thousands of people lined up on Saturday (May 9) to receive free food, as the Covid-19 crisis highlights Geneva’s generally invisible poor .
In the Swiss city famous for its private banks, luxury watchmakers and chic boutiques, people started lining up at 5am (0300 GMT) on Saturday, according to the Caravane de Solidarite association, the main organizer of the event.
When the distribution at the Vernet hockey stadium in Geneva began four hours later, the line of people, most wearing masks and standing 2 meters away, was stretched and injured for approximately 1.5 km.
Organizers said they believed that at least as many people had turned up as a week earlier, when more than 2,000 participated.
“We are in a kind of crescendo,” Silvana Mastromatteo, director of Caravane de Solidarite, told AFP, adding that Saturday’s distribution was the sixth the organization had established since the crisis began, with more and more people showing up. .
“We need food,” said Silvia Mango, a 64-year-old woman from the Philippines, after waiting three hours under a hot spring sun.
“Everything has been much more difficult since the crisis began,” he said, adjusting the scarf that covered his mouth and nose, and acknowledged that this is the second time he has accepted a cast.
‘IMMEDIATELY FRAGILIZED’
Switzerland introduced a series of emergency measures in mid-March, including the closure of restaurants and most other businesses, to combat the spread of the new coronavirus, which to date has killed more than 1,500 people out of more than 30,000 infected in the alpine nation.
While the country has gradually begun to lift the measures, the nearly two-month shutdown has had particularly severe consequences for undocumented workers and other vulnerable groups already living on the border.
According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, around eight percent of the Swiss population, or about 660,000 people, are considered to be living in poverty, out of a million living in a precarious situation.
“We know this population exists,” said Isabelle Widmer, who is in charge of coordinating the city of Geneva’s response to the crisis and who was supporting the food campaign on Saturday.
“But it has been amazing to see how this population became so fragile immediately from this crisis,” he said, as volunteers wearing yellow and orange fluorescent vests piled food bags behind tables covered in bottles of disinfectant.
COVID-19 TESTS
About 1,500 large shopping bags filled with rice, pasta, instant coffee, cereal, and other produce have been prepared that line the walls of the large entrance hall and fill a nearby hallway.
In addition, a large pile of reserves rises in a corner next to mountains of empty bags, ready to be filled if necessary.
And if food supplies run out, coupons of 20 francs (S $ 30) will be handed out, said Patrick Wieland of the charity Doctor Without Borders, co-organizer of Saturday’s event that follows its French acronym MSF.
In addition to food, MSF offers free Covid-19 tests to people who show symptoms, said Wieland, who is in charge of MSF’s Covid-19 response in Switzerland.
Mastromatteo said there was no requirement for recipients to demonstrate that they needed them.
“It is not easy to stand in this line and ask for help,” he said, insisting that “whoever is here is here because they need it.”
Miguel Martínez, a 27-year-old Colombian undocumented restaurant worker in line, lamented that “the virus has overturned everything. There is no work. Nothing.”
He said it was frustrating having to accept brochures, but said he had no choice.
“The restaurants have received assistance, but I have not. I have nothing to eat.”
‘WE HAVE NOTHING’
Odmaa Myagmarjavzanlkham, a 27-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mongolia, also said she had nowhere to go as she could not find a job cleaning houses, and all of her husband’s gardening jobs had also disappeared.
“There is no work. We cannot find the food,” he said.
Usually, the couple send most of the money they earn to Mongolia, where their five-year-old son still lives with his grandmother. But now, they can’t even cover their rent, he said.
“It is very expensive here, and we have nothing.”
A survey of about 550 of those queuing to buy food a week ago showed that more than half were undocumented, but almost a third had a residence permit and almost 4 percent were Swiss citizens.
That survey also showed that 3.4 percent of respondents said they had already tested positive for Covid-19, Wieland said, noting that that’s three times the percentage seen overall in Geneva.
He noted that many of those most affected by the crisis live in tight places, sometimes with a dozen family members locked in a small apartment, making them more vulnerable to infection.
“There is poverty in Geneva that is generally quite hidden, under the radar,” he said.
“Obviously, with the coronavirus crisis, everything becomes much more visible.”
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