The Creu Roja offers food and hygiene kits to migrant temporary workers

Lleida is in the West of Catalonia, and towns like Corbins, Granja d’Escarp and Vilanova de la Barca are some of the places where temporary migrant workers have built illegal settlements.

The migrants come to the area in seek of a job in the fields, but in most cases the salary they receive is not enough to pay for an accommodation. In this video some migrant temporary workers explain their situation in the fields around the Lleida province this summer which is about to come to an end. 

Fruit picking in Lleida: endemic bad conditions

Dozens of Sub Saharan migrants come to Lleida during the months of July and August. Some of them can’t manage to work. If they do, they work without a roof over their heads.

This is an old story, and Catalan writer Francesc Serés has well reflected it in his book ‘La pell de la frontera’, which in English literally means ‘The skin of the border’.

The book portrays the cases of migrants and it includes photographs of the conditions they live in while working or trying to work in the field: no running water, no bed, no decent toilet.

Creu Roja gives away hygienic and food kits

Workers of the Creu Roja, the Catalan of the Red Cross, go to the temporary workers settlements to offer them hygienic kits twice a week. Such kits include: shampoo, soap, tissues and moisturizer cream. This summer the CreuRoja has distributed more than 170 of them.

Technicians from the local government work together with Creu Roja to evaluate specific cases and to distribute rice, lentils, cookies and sardines to the temporary field workers once a week. The food distribution takes place every Tuesday and Thursday of July and August.

The social work done by local governments and the aid and medical nonprofit in the province of Lleida rely on funding extracted from the Personal Income Tax.