It has been the Union of Small Farmers (UPA) , whose general secretary in Huelva, Manuel Piedra, is also responsible for hiring the contingent of Moroccan women who every year come to work in the strawberry campaign, which has given the voice of alarm: people who, a priori, do not have access to the Minimum Vital Income are flocking to the municipalities, believing that they will obtain it.

The images that Manuel Piedra himself has collected in the Huelva municipality of Palos de la Frontera leave no room for doubt: hundreds of people are crowding, without any respect for the distancing measures that the health situation requires, at the gates of the town hall to request your registration in town. They have been led there "deceived -according to the testimony of Piedra-, people who have told them that by registering they are going to give them help, so they take them there charging them for the displacement, the photocopies, and some registration documents that really They are free, and anyone with internet access can download, and they do business with a lie. "

A lie that consists of telling them that with the registration they will have access to this income , when the truth is that "probably, of all the people we are seeing in those huge queues these days, those who can really receive the Minimum Vital Income as soon as they reach 15 % ".

Most of the people who gather at the gates of the municipalities of these agricultural municipalities - eminently strawberry growers - are irregular workers, who do not have the required legal residence permit, or workers who have been hired at home, while among the Requirements to access this aid is having "continued and uninterrupted residence in Spain for at least the year prior to the filing of the application, and legal residence in our country in the case of foreign citizens."

This leaves out, according to the person in charge of sending the Moroccan contingent to Huelva, all those workers in origin "whose special dramatic situation this year makes them easy prey to deceive . "

And it is worth remembering that, with the campaign over and without work in the fields, more than 7,000 Moroccan seasonal workers remain trapped in the province of Huelva without appearing that in the short term they will be able to return to their country, which maintains the borders closed. Despite numerous requests from associations and employers, who are already talking about "humanitarian crisis," just a dozen women in a particularly vulnerable situation - pregnant, recently given birth, critically ill, ... - have been repatriated in the In recent weeks, while more than 7,000 are waiting, collected from the farms, with nothing to do, with their families waiting for them and without any income.

"In this situation, if they come and tell them that just by registering they will obviously receive help or think about it, and that is what is happening without it appearing that the city council is clarifying that this is not the case," Piedra insists.

Indeed, the municipalities - it is not happening only in Palos de la Frontera, in other strawberry municipalities such as Lucena del Puerto there have also been queues in recent days - are obliged to collect the registration applications and the documentation that each one contributes , but then they will have to verify the veracity of the data provided and whether the requirements for registration are met - not for the Minimum Vital Income, for which other conditions must also be met.

NGO information

In this sense, it should be remembered that, although some mayors have been against it, the regulations state that "sub-housing ( shacks, caravans, caves, etc. and even total absence of a roof ) can and should appear as valid addresses in the Register. "Therefore, many residents in shanty towns in the province of Huelva have decided to exercise their right to register in the face of the false expectation that they will thus be able to access the Minimum Vital Income.

In this situation, UPA has already spoken with organizations such as the Red Cross to request that the mediators who are in contact with the women who make up the Moroccan contingent adequately inform them that registration does not mean access to this aid, inviting them not to assume unnecessary risks to their health - those that may derive from the crowds - or useless expenses with which they will not achieve anything.

"Those who have the right to register, of course they do, we do not get into that, but do not do so with false hopes and deceived, which is what is happening," insists the UPA general secretary, who requests that humanitarian organizations and that are in permanent contact with the seasonal workers and residents in these settlements advise them and explain the conditions and requirements, in the face of this avalanche.

The truth is that organizations such as the Red Cross have already launched a special team to advise and accompany the most vulnerable people in the processing of the Minimum Vital Income, made up of technical and volunteer personnel, whose members have received specific training on this processing process. .

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