People Before Profit Cllr Eamonn McCann said,
“Some domiciliary care workers in Derry were issued late this week with Personal Protection Equipment which fell far short of what’s needed – plastic goggles which fit so loosely they cannot serve as a barrier to the virus and wafer-thin masks made of paper that become useless after 15 minutes wear.
This is unacceptable for workers who might be calling to a dozen homes a day to look after some of our most frail fellow-citizens.
The basic fault does not lie with the Western Trust. The shortages and bottlenecks arise at an earlier stage in the supply chain. The blame rests with the planners and policy-makers who didn’t prepare for coronavirus and haven’t handled the resulting emergency well.
They haven’t levelled with the workers or with people at large about the continuing shortages or when we will know that there are adequate supplies available for distribution.
Headlines such as “Health officials confident Northern Ireland has enough PPE for demand” may mark a genuine effort to reassure vulnerable people and their families. But false reassurance is worse that no reassurance at all.
Care-workers to whom I have spoken today are dismayed at the lack of proper safety equipment and disillusioned that they haven’t been trusted with the whole truth.
When this is over, there will have to be an examination of whose actions and inactions aggravated the crisis.
People Before Profit, along with others, is engaged with officials in trying to sort the immediate problems out. Longer-term, there will be a reckoning.”
