Good news for the family of the 9-year-old girl that fainted due to hunger in a bakery on the island of Rhodes two days ago. The mother, a jobless hotel worker, was offered a work at an energy company in Athens. She will work from home. She will earn the minimum wage of 650 euros per month plus the allowance for her twin daughters.
The single mother has been unemployed since August 2019. Due to the pandemic that hotel where she worked last year would not open again. She has been unable to find a job in a tourist accommodation this year and was struggling to feed her children.
The seasonal hotel worker was without income for several months.
Teams of the Public Power Company went to the family’s home beginning of the week to cut the electricity supply due to unpaid bills.
Two days ago, the mother passed by a bakery together with the girl that was starving. While waiting at the queue the girl fainted as we reported on Wednesday.
The family drama triggered a wave of solidarity not only on Rhodes, Dodecanese, and Greece but also abroad.
A local charity provided food and other necessities to the family and offered to cover their basic needs for as long as needed.
A local businessman paid the electricity bill, while many others made the same offer, as well, reports local newspaper dimokratiki.
unrepcended was also the government and state institutions mobilization, with government officials, including the Finance Minister, to call the mother promising help.
End good, all good?
The family drama is only the tip of the iceberg of unemployment not only on Rhodes but across the Dodecanese and in other regions where people earn their main income from the tourism.
According to locala media, “dozens of families in Rhodes are living in poverty as unemployment now reaches unprecedented levels. Redundancies and pay cuts have already begun since the lockdown, without workers being able to either protect themselves, claim their earnings or receive benefits from the government, as there is virtually no certified employment relationship” for seasonal workers.
Hundreds of workers are standby, and together with them also business owners, employers and employees. They are holding their breath carefully monitoring the developments in an effort to solve the puzzle of this year’s tourist season.
To local employees other seasonal employees have moved to the island form other parts of Greece, renting homes and are now without work.
“The blow to the local economy is heavy and the winter will be even heavier, as the effects of the lockdown combined with the shrinking tourist season are expected to lead to an explosion of poverty,” dimokratiki stresses.
In a statement the Association of Hotel Employees of Rhodes expressed its satisfaction for single mother and her twin girls.
It appeals at the government to find solutions and take measures also for other unemployed hotel workers, who are in equally disastrous economic situation, “so that there are no similar incidents neither in Rhodes nor in any other part of the country.”
Speaking to media, the single mother said that her daughter asked her “Did I need to faint so that we get help?”
So happy to see this was resolved. Hope that government help will come for others such difficulty.