Welcome to Britain

Amanda Sebestyen writes.

Last month, the Roma Refugee Organisation was contacted by a man whose recently-arrived relatives had been placed in a condemned school building in Camden. This building was being used as emergency housing for refugees, mostly Romanies from Slovakia and Poland.

There was neither water nor kitchen. The Benefits Agency was refusing to accept the school as a valid permanent address. Hence, no money to buy food outside. People literally did not have enough to eat.

I went to investigate three days later. There was a security guard at the gate and no-one was allowed inside the building, not even relatives. I was told indignantly by the school manager that water was definitely connected. We found out later that for the first week all the water was cold.

A week later we got permission to go inside. Conditions were a shock. Hardboard cubicles had been erected, with only beds inside. There was no storage either for food or clothes. Heating was on during the daytime only. The shower room was unheated and consisted of a bank of showers with central controls high up on the wall. There were no basins. One child with diarrhoea and an ear infection had been to hospital; her mother explained that there was nowhere to wash her. Food had to be kept on the windowsill of the room.

The inside of most cubicles looked like wall-to-wall beds, admittedly kept scrupulously clean. It was only a matter of time before an infection spread to other children.

The overriding consideration of the staff seemed to be security. There were no interpreters in the building so people made do with sign language. The most disturbing element was the lack of food. We had been told that people were eating "somehow" - but how?

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