MP reveals workers at Herefordshire farm visited local store last week

Workers on a farm in Herefordshire, at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak, were ousted to four stores in the area last week.

Toll MP in North Herefordshire, Bill Wiggin takes an extraordinary step, with a website that allows Mutton’s AS Green & Co workers to take a minibus to Iceland’s Premark and Romanian stores, Worcester’s Morrison and Malvern’s Morrison. I made it clear.

Workers shared one toilet up to 60 people and didn’t have to wear face masks, as previous workers claimed to have poor hygiene on site.

Mr Wiggin said he named the stop because he wanted to know if the people had contacted workers on the farm.

“It’s encouraging to hear that the British Public Health Service has declared that there is no immediate threat to the wider community, but we must not be content,” he said.

The first workers on the farm began to feel sick by last Tuesday and weekend, 73 were positive Antivirus. The date of arrival is unknown.

A spokesman for Iceland said staff at the Worcester store did not remember the farm workers they visited, but were convinced that the company’s guidelines for social distance, hygiene, and operational processes were followed. .. Primark also said that all stores had extensive safety measures in place.

Family-owned farms serving Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s Aldi, and Asda were shut down on weekends.

Approximately 200 staff are expected to live on the property for two weeks as one expanded bubble.

Local authorities were said to provide them with “beer and tobacco” to keep the workers, mainly Eastern Europeans, on the farm.

However, Western Mercia police are working with the British Public Health Service to track three people who have left the facility, including one who tested positive for Covid-19.

Concerns have been raised about working practices on the farm. Government advice to seasonal workers allows travelers to the UK to start working on the farm immediately, provided they live and work on site.

However, the rule is that you must be in the UK within the same 24 hours and be with a colleague who is not in touch with other staff.

Government advice to seasonal workers allows people traveling to the UK to begin working on the farm immediately, provided they live and work in the field.

However, the rule is that you must be in the UK within the same 24 hours and be with a colleague who is not in touch with other staff.

One former employee claimed that workers at the farm’s packhouse didn’t have to wear face masks.

She claimed that the only PPE offered was a hairnet and a beard net, and “an outer jacket worn by an old-fashioned green grocery store.” Gloves were optional, she added.

She told her parents that 40 people work in the larger of the two rooms in the packing house. “There’s not much room, no social distance,” she said.

Brandon Burrridge and Lear Johnson (a couple from Malvern, Worcestershire) explained how they signed up to work on the farm after seeing an advertisement for Pick For Britain in the local media.

They left on July 2 before the outbreak of the virus.

Ms. Johnson (21) claimed that during the introduction process, about 15 people were sitting on a shared bench without mentioning that they were 2 meters apart. “We had nothing about hand sanitizers, we were not given anything, we were not allowed to wear gloves,” she told the BBC.

“It sounds strange to us, but we thought the risk of coronaviruses would be low because it’s an outdoor job, but we didn’t consider shared facilities.

“People were saying “there’s only one toilet”-it’s ridiculous-and it grew quite quickly and we were told [by other team members] Avoid all costs.

“There was a little hand sanitizer in the toilet.”

Karen Wright, director of public health at Herefordshire Council, argued that there was no threat to the community and that quarantined workers were given “best support.”