"We should be transporting material for hospitals, not static bicycles for homes."
- Xabi Otegi Amundarain works in a transport company and in the situation we are experiencing it is clear that his work is strategic, but they have asked the elderly for a screening: what is the service to guarantee and what is not, to do what is really strategic. “I’m working from here to there, without any kind of guarantee.”
What roles should carriers play in this situation and what services are they providing?
We are strategic, but not strategic for everything. That is, we should be moving to hospitals the necessary devices and materials to respond to the coronavirus crisis and bring them to the places where food is needed, but we are working in a normal situation: watering, wine, cocktails… and in the last week a lot, on static bikes for homes, on musculation equipment, on treadmills, etc. We are prepared to help turn this difficult situation around, but not to transport cocktails. We are working to keep the system going.
-You can think of nothing more than the navel itself. To bring a bicycle from Vitoria-Gasteiz to Donostia-San Sebastián, three carriers must leave the house"
Are the people who continue to make demands for home sports and other things aware of what it means to you?
In a normal situation, this system is not sustainable, it is not sustainable to ask for a bicycle today and get to your home tomorrow, and when many companies offer the free transportation service, there is a special situation that we are living in, it is even more unsustainable. One can only think of the navel itself. To bring a bicycle from Vitoria-Gasteiz to Donostia-San Sebastian, three carriers must be taken out of the house, to which must be added the employees of offices, warehouses… We must make urgent transports that take away our time and put our health at risk (we do not know who touched them and the vast majority of distributors are autonomous, lack sufficient resources or protocols). Let people take all of this into account and the businesses and businesses that demand the same; just yesterday we complained about a florist because the flowers that they were asking for didn't come to him.
"In places where gloves and face masks are needed, hospitals, nursing homes, etc., they lack material, and we, in order to get the musculation equipment to your house, have left us gloves and face masks"
If the carrier is infected, the virus can also be moved from one location to another.
That's right, and not just in Euskal Herria. Some ten or fifteen trucks travel from our work to the whole of Europe. Pay attention.
What protection measures do you have in your company?
Every day we hear that there is a lack of material in places where gloves and masks are needed, hospitals, nursing homes, etc., and we, for the musculation apparatus to come to your home, spare us gloves and masks. What we don't have is training to know exactly how to put and remove gloves and face masks. The company gives us the material to make us believe, but is not responsible for the later use, and the company has that obligation, even more so in an emergency situation, because otherwise some workers prefer to load the truck without taking those safety measures, as they are “uncomfortable” at work.
And what's the picture at home? Contaminated?
I would like to know. We've had eight or nine comrades at home, with the heat, but because they don't have coronavirus tests, officially we don't have a positive.
"I call on the authorities to make sense, to put the economy at the service of life and not the other way around"
What message does it have for our politicians and entrepreneurs?
We have already made the request to the company: to make a screening, the service that needs to be guaranteed (for example, to get respirators to hospitals) and which does not. And that's what I would ask all companies to do what's really strategic. At the same time, I do not know of any sector that is so precarious because of its strategic nature, because the conditions under which we are moving are very bad.
I call on the authorities to make sense, to put the economy at the service of life and not the other way round. They are endangering the population, putting our health at risk. And not only our own, but those of the house; in my case, the family will spend two weeks without leaving home, including the children of 9 months, while I am working from here to there and out, without any kind of guarantee.
