The Unified Police Union (SUP) has denounced to the Labor Inspection the unhealthiness of the rooms in which asylum seekers wait at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport, where they claim there are bedbugs and cockroaches. “The degree of overcrowding is extreme, with the capacity of the rooms being multiplied by four, which makes them a danger when it comes to the spread of infectious diseases,” emphasizes the union.
The agents also urge the occupational risk prevention service of the General Directorate of the Police to go to the Madrid airport to assess whether “they comply with the most basic conditions for health,” the union states in a statement. The complaint includes images of mattresses on the floor of the rooms, accumulated garbage, dirty facilities and the presence of bedbugs and cockroaches.
“It poses a serious risk of exposure both to the bites of these insects and to the transmission of multiple diseases” such as typhus, plague, turalemia, Q fever, visceral leishmaniasis, as well as viruses such as hepatitis B or HIV. , say the police. They clarify that at the moment none of these diseases have been recorded but they warn that there is a risk that their presence could lead to a “future zoonosis.”
The union points out that during the last five months they have received repeated complaints from the agents who provide services in the inadmissible and asylum rooms of Barajas.
This week it was made public that the Red Cross has stopped providing assistance to asylum seekers waiting at the Barajas airport due to overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, although the SUP indicates that their absence had been going on for days.
This Thursday, Interior announced that, together with AENA, it has set up a new room to “improve the conditions of stay” of asylum seekers at the airport, which will have a service area for applications, a dining room, toilets and a rest area.
As a measure to alleviate the situation in Barajas, where more than 300 applicants for international protection have been crowded for months, Spain will require transit visas from all travelers who have a Senegalese or Kenyan passport, wherever they fly from and stopover at Spanish airports.
Thus, government sources told EFE, the aim is to prevent the stop in Spain before taking another flight from being used to stay as asylum seekers.
