“A disaster waiting to happen” - Traveller communities buckling from the impact of the pandemic | openDemocracy
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-traveller-communities-buckling-from-the-
The multiple pressures on the communities, including rising rates of unemployment, poor access to healthcare, overcrowded living conditions and hostility, are becoming near intolerable, say elders, parliamentarians and advocates. On the day of the lockdown, families across the UK were given clear guidance about how they should stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives. Soon after the lockdown the chancellor followed up with comforting news about furloughing people in employment and, later, how the state would also protect the income of self-employed people. Now parliamentarians and community members are calling on the government to urgently give similarly clear guidance to nomadic communities and the insecurely housed Roma population about how they can protect themselves against Covid-19. Community members are saying that they have fallen through the cracks in every way and feel confused, economically stricken and forgotten.
Human rights organisations, including the lobby group, Friends, Families and Travellers (FFT), wrote an urgent letter to government ministers in March, calling for the government to secure access to basic facilities for the estimated 95,000 people living roadside, as well as on authorised sites and boats, who need to self-isolate. In particular the letter asked for an end to evictions, pointed to the lack of sanitation roadside, to the endemic overcrowding on many sites, and of fears that existing health needs would not be met during the pandemic. Homeless families living roadside, of which there are around 10,000, fear eviction, and even if most councils have delayed eviction orders, around a third of the families have very limited access to water and sanitation. Council leisure centres, which are used by those living roadside for showers, are now closed so sanitation is dangerously poor, and access to water refill points are also closed. The co-chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Traveller and Roma, Kate Green MP and Baroness Whitaker, have also written two letters to the government, asking for urgent public health guidance on matters such as these to be issued to the communities.