Since Saturday afternoon we have looked down from the towers into the streets of Flemington, to our neighbours who are very close to us.
We see kids playing and riding their bicycles and doing whatever they want to do. And our kids are stuck at home, inside. Imagine how hard that is for our children, to be locked in the flats and looking out of the windows at those other kids.
What we need is more testing, lots of testing, but not lockdowns. Yesterday they sent 500 police. Why? I want to ask Daniel Andrews why he sent us the police, but no medical help. This is not a police issue. Why didn’t they send us 500 nurses?
And I want to ask Daniel Andrews, is he being locked down, with his family? Are they all being tested? If not, why is he forcing us? There are 40 cases in St Kilda, I hear, so why isn’t he locking his area down?
My name is Elhadi Abass. I have lived in the flats since 2001. I came to Australia from Sudan, after the military took control. I went to Libya and then to Egypt and then after a very, very long time of my application being processed, I was approved to come to Australia. Now I am the manager of the Multicultural Sudanese Centre here on the Flemington estate.
Despite my position, I had no warning of what happened yesterday. I just opened my eyes and the police were everywhere, and 90% percent of the people on the estate had no idea why they were here. The children were scared. They were saying: “Why are the police coming here? Are they coming here to catch criminals?”
We know how serious Covid-19 is. It is hard for everyone to deal with. It is invisible, so you can’t see your enemy. I think the government has been working very hard on this problem, but on our estate, they need to adopt a very different strategy, because these are high rise buildings. And they should have been doing this from the start.
We have two small lifts for 20 levels, each level with nine flats. There is not any social distancing. And for months, I have not seen anyone clean the stairwells. There is no proper cleaning of the foyers, the glass doors at the entrance, the laundries. We had one hand sanitiser dispenser for 20 floors! Imagine!
So what should happen now? We need to solve the problem. On Sunday we had a meeting with Bill Shorten (Labor MP for Maribyrnong, the electorate that covers the Flemington estate) and a man from the state government, and they said they will take our opinions on how the problem should be solved to Daniel Andrews.
First, we need the police to get out of our area. The second thing is we need three places where people can get tested for the coronavirus. There needs to be two in the Flemington estate, and one in North Melbourne estate, at the bottom of the flats where people can easily go.
This should have been done from the beginning. Daniel Andrews should have spoken clearly to our people through the media, and through our community leaders, and he should have said: “Please be tested at these testing points, as soon as possible to help the community to be safe.”
There should be no lockdown, but lots of testing. Until today, nobody was knocking on our doors, talking to us about getting tested or trying to find out how we were.
The other point is that most of our kids study outside the area, in Islamic schools. Daniel Andrews needs to make sure that before those schools are reopened, all the teachers are tested, and all the kids, and then all of us as parents. This should be done throughout Victoria, not just for the Flemington estate.
So now we have presented our views through Bill Shorten and we will hear if there is a result.
