It’s a short cell phone film, only five and a half minutes long. He shows mountains of rubbish in the corners of the room, walls with brown water damming up, dirt-encrusted stovetops. Not the ambience in which you want to spend your corona quarantine for days. Not an ambience you want to spend any time in at all. And certainly not without the bare necessities of life.
If refugees in the district become infected with the corona virus, the first floor of the container accommodation in Pöring is the place where they are taken. So that they can recover if necessary, but above all so that they do not infect others.
On Thursday, a 32-year-old arrived there who otherwise lives in the accommodation on Gruber Straße in Poing. The man’s application for asylum has now been approved, and Elke Knitter was very pleased about that. The Poinger bookseller has been taking care of the 32-year-old on a voluntary basis for a long time, who has also found a job and is on the right track. This is one of the reasons why the name and origin should preferably remain anonymous.
In any case, Elke Knitter’s protégé is diagnosed with Corona. He and a roommate will be picked up in Poing on Thursday morning and brought to Pöring. In the course of the day, Whatsapps arrive on Knitter’s mobile phone; The Poinger briefly summarizes what she learns: “What is happening is not humane.”
No food, no water – a misunderstanding?
The hygienic conditions are one thing. The other thing is that the Poinger refugees are waiting in vain for someone to take care of them, for someone to at least give them food or water. Elke Knitter takes things into her own hands at some point in the evening, orders food from a Chinese restaurant, buys biscuits, drinking water and toilet paper – not even that is available – and brings everything to Pöring.
At the responsible office in the district office, it first ends up in the mailbox. She wasn’t called back until Friday morning. An employee explained, Knitter later said, that there had apparently been a misunderstanding. Because like other district citizens who have to be in quarantine, the refugees would have to provide themselves with the necessary food. The district office also informed the SZ on request: “Most of the affected people already take groceries to Pöring, or have friends or third parties bring what they need there.”
Only: the two refugees from Poing didn’t understand it that way. The documents that were handed to them were written in German without a translation, says Elke Knitter, and during the conversation they were not given a clear explanation of what they had to do now. And if they had, according to Poinger, it wouldn’t have been of any use to them: “Send someone else to buy groceries for a week, including drinking water – how is that supposed to work?” Even if it could have been organized, her protégé would not have had enough cash to pay for it.
The refugees could also get food from a caterer
The district office points out that the residents of the quarantine floor also have the option of getting food from a caterer for a fee. “Most residents reject this,” the statement said. The authority writes about the current case: “No extreme emergency was described to the employees of the district office. The usual possible solutions were rejected in this case.” Her protégé also told the bookseller in Poing differently.
Water is of course available in the accommodation, it is connected to the water supply. “But to be honest,” says Elke Knitter, “I wouldn’t want to drink anything from these taps either.” The district office also comments on hygiene: there are security staff on site at the accommodation, who can also hand out hygiene packages; Cleaning supplies are also available. The first floor is cleaned and disinfected by a specialist company at regular intervals. The mobile phone films that Elke Knitter forwarded to the SZ would not suggest that.
In the meantime, the excitement of Thursday for the Poingerin and her protégé has subsided a bit. The further care of the 32-year-old is now regulated – also with support from the district office. It was also assured that more hygienic conditions would be created in the accommodation, she says. But little has changed in Elke Knitter’s judgment overall: “Totally corrosive.”