Covid-19 recovery plan exposes struggles in the community

Written for the May 14, 2021, edition of Penguin News by Nicholas Roberts - published under the headline “Covid-19 recovery plan exposes struggles in the community”.

THE FIG Covid-19 recovery plan has exposed issues of mistreated employees, houses without heating, stateless new-borns, and mid-outbreak rent increases which MLA Roberts described as “distressing.”

Some of the problems were recognised as having existed pre-pandemic but only then exposed – leading to government doing work to review their support scheme, ensure employees could assert employment rights, and speak with foreign governments to seek solutions for the stateless babies.

Deputy-Chair of the Recovery Coordination Group, Stephen Luxton, stated significant amounts of data was gathered by FIG through a combination of an online and physical survey on the Covid-19 response, and a later series of group discussion workshops. Throughout this process workshops were held with the Falklands Community, 103 individual feedback sessions, and 290 people completed the survey, exposing the hardships of some in the community during the pandemic.

Mr Luxton said there were issues of, “people being poorly treated by their employers at times, and not feeling confident enough to challenge that treatment.” This issue, Mr Luxton said, “was a pre-existing problem, but Covid really shone a light on it.” Work was intended, Mr Luxton said, to “help people assert and improve their employment rights so that type of thing doesn’t happen again.”

“Workers protection is an issue that’s been highlighted for decades.”

MLA Leona Roberts stated. “This work has spotlighted things, has given us evidence of problems that perhaps were anecdotal before... It’s about how we can address this going forward.”

Housing was recognised as another theme among Covid-19 issues. Mr Luxton explained there were “instances of rent being increased in the private sector,” during the pandemic and people, “that were affected by that found it very hard to manage at times alongside a reduction in their income if they were affected by both.”

Relating to this Mr Luxton said tenancy protection was to be worked into the housing strategy. Housing issues were worsened by additional pressure on the rental market due to the need for quarantine accommodation he said.

Due to issues of “financial hardship through the height of the pandemic, particularly through the winter period,” some members of the community reported during the recovery workshops and survey that houses had low levels of food and, “little or no heating in their home.”

“We’re looking at how we can work with the local food bank, how we can look at the hardship payments that are available for people that do have a genuine need,” Mr Luxton said.

Part of what lead to this issue, Mr Luxton noted, was an issue of pride. “A good number of people simply don’t want to feel that they’re struggling, don’t want other people to feel that they’re struggling.”

Incoming Chief Executive Andy Keeling said, “dealing with some of the stigma that people might feel” about getting support was an “important issue.”

An issue was also explained about individuals who live and work in the Islands who possess work permits but due to passports expiring during the course of the pandemic find themselves unable to get new documentation.

“There is a problem with people who are becoming unable to travel because they can’t get passports, and are unable to get passports because they can’t travel. That also extends to identity documents for newborn children.

“It’s a small number of individuals” Mr Luxton said, “but there are significant practical issues.”

Asked what work was underway to solve the issue of stateless babies, outgoing Chief Executive Barry Rowland commented “We’ve had some support from some embassies for some foreign nationals, there’s less progress being made on others.” Mr Rowland said: “The home country really has to take this seriously”

Regarding future work MLA Roberts said “given some of the issues identified there’s not a natural full-stop.”

She continued: “We would certainly hope it would be a constant journey of improvement. That’s going to take time and effort from right across the community.”

Nicholas Roberts