I can’t sleep in the hostel, it’s full. There is no place and we have been waiting for a week. We spent almost the whole night near the door, they told us that when some temporary workers leave we will be able to enter”, said Richard, a young man from the Congo, this Monday in the Champs Elysees, 300 meters from pavilion 3 of Fira de Lleida, which the City Council has enabled to accommodate 122 temporary workers.
“Here the shower is free, the coffee is also free, but you have to be registered”, adds one of his colleagues, who prefers to speak anonymously and who, like Richard, has not been there for a week has no place to sleep in pavilion 3. In the meantime, they sleep on the ground.
Richard and the five friends who accompany him are looking for work picking fruit in and around Lleida. He hopes to find one on the job board of the agricultural organization Unió de Pagesos, where he has obtained employment in other years. He has arrived in Lleida from Huelva, where during the last few weeks he has worked in other agricultural campaigns.
The union assures that all farmers who contract through Unió offer accommodation. “We guarantee the worker that the farmer who hires them will offer them a place to sleep, either in collective spaces or the farmer’s own; if this is not the case, we do not manage the recruitment, unless he lives less than ten kilometers from the farm and can travel”, says Salomó Torres, vice president of Pagesos Solidaris.
Lleida City Council opened the facility on June 12 through a company that manages and offers the pavilion 122 beds, showers, self-laundry, storage, breakfast and dinner. La Paeria also has 99 places in furnished housing of the Municipal Urban Agenda Company (EMAU) intended for temporary people from the countryside in a situation of economic precariousness with an employment contract who pay five euros per night. According to the City Council, the pavilion is having a high occupancy, “but, at the same time, there is a high turnover of people, which makes it possible to attend to those arriving in the city day by day and to respond fairly quickly to demand” .
The council states that this increase has been particularly evident during some days in June, but it is currently at similar levels to last year at this same time, which suggests “that, despite the high employment, there is no has a significant impact on an increase in people who spend the night on public roads”, as noted by both the street educators who make weekly night outings and the agents of the Urban Guard.
Until this Tuesday, the single temporary care office served 440 people, 385 slept there and 55 only used the shower and locker service. 3,177 overnight stays and 526 shower services have been registered. 75 men and 4 women have settled in the EMAU housing.
