Electric Picnic camp site is now ‘flooded, freezing and dirty’
UKRAINIANS living in tents at the Electric Picnic festival site have spoken out about flooding toilets, freezing cold tents and wet and dirty living conditions.
Several hundred people have been staying in tents at the campsite in Stradbally, Co. Laois – which has the capacity to house 750 people – since the festival finished two weeks ago.
This week – the first week without unseasonably warm temperatures – the Irish Mail on Sunday visited Stradbally on a cold, rainy day.
The MoS was denied access to the campsite by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for ‘operational reasons’ but we spoke to Ukrainian nationals near the makeshift campsite.
Serhii and Olha Khrystiuk were on their way to buy an electric heater after their tent and clothes got soaked in the rain.
Using limited English and gestures, Olha said their three children were shivering back at the campsite.
‘If it weren’t for the rain, everything would be fine,’ Serhii said through a translation app.
‘The food is good, the attitude is good, but the rain has started and our tent and our things got wet.’
The couple came out of the shop a few minutes later with a tiny portable heater and a few pairs of children’s wellingtons.
Eighteen-year-old Svyaat Harkavyi said conditions were ‘bad, because in the tent, sometimes it’s so cold, like in a fridge’.
Svyaat said there was ‘not so much’ rain getting into his tent ‘but [it’s] very cold’.
He said: ‘We got sleeping bags but I don’t think it helps. Some people with children have to buy heaters for their tents. Almost all [of the portaloos are] flooded by water and the floor is wet.’
He said new arrivals don’t receive anything to shower with except a towel, meaning people have to go and buy their own products.
He said there was no hot water in the showers for several days after he arrived, but showers had been fixed this week. There was no hot water in the trough-like communal sinks the refugees use for basic hygiene, he said. He described the three meals a day served on the campsite as good, but said portions had become smaller as more people arrived. ‘Sometimes we don’t have a place to sit to eat food because [there’s] too much people,’ he said.
There were initially no food alternatives for vegetarians or Muslims who don’t eat pork, but this had been rectified on the day he spoke to the MoS.
Svyaat added that no tea or coffee is provided at the campsite, just boiling water.
Dima, who did not give his surname, said conditions had been ‘good’ during the fine weather, adding: ‘But now it’s very dirty, cold, rainy – very bad now.’
He also complained of cold water in the showers.
Dima arrived on September 6 and intends to go to Galway, where his wife and daughter have been living for 18 months. ‘They have a place for me. They gave me a letter from the hotel [to say there is a bed for him], but Citywest sent me here,’ said Dima. ‘I do not know why. We have a place – we have a letter.’
Ivan and Ifram, both in their late teens – who were on their way back from the supermarket with a bag of bread and snacks – said they needed heaters in their tents and more food.
Local independent councillor Aisling Moran, who got access to the site earlier in the week, said: ‘We shouldn’t be putting people in tents going into winter.’
Describing the shower set-up, she told the MoS: ‘On the men’s side there’s eight showers and on the women’s side there’s about 20, but when you walk out of the showers you’re into a wide open space that anyone can look into. There’s no cubicles to get changed. The wash area is another marquee, with one long sink the whole way down and one washing machine and one tumble dryer at the bottom.’
Residents pay €4 to use the washing machine and €2 to use the dryer for 20 minutes.
Ms Moran said prefab toilet buildings would have been more appropriate than portaloos, and toilets should be segregated for men, women and children.
She said there was no storage area in the tents, just beds.
‘No fridge, so if anyone was diabetic there’s nowhere to store their medication,’ she said.
‘They have breakfast, lunch and dinner, but they can’t go in and get a sandwich in the middle of the day. If they miss dinner, they have to walk into town to get something to eat, but they’ve nowhere to cook and nowhere to store anything.’
A spokesman for the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth said tents at Stradbally ‘are rated as fully waterproof but any issues with water ingress should be reported immediately to the on-site facilities management team’.
They added the department had notified site managers of issues raised by the Ukrainian residents.
‘The managers currently provide heaters on request and will distribute widely if conditions deteriorate,’ the spokesman said.
‘No reports of a shortage of food or complaints regarding portion sizes have been directly received by either the provider or the department. There is an unlimited supply of hot water.
‘The department continues to monitor conditions and liaises with the provider on a continuous basis. This is an emergency facility, provided due to the chronic shortage of accommodation. The department is working hard to ensure people at the site are moved to more appropriate accommodation as soon as it is available.’
The spokesman said the site will be used for
only six weeks.