Charles Bruzon House: Arbitrary Restrictions

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 Monday, June 8, 2020 - 09:14

The issues that afflict the residents of Charles Bruzon house is the breaking point of an accumulation of experiences since lockdown. Indeed, the grievances as written in this report are to be read with relation to the context with which they exist in, i.e. an extended period of lockdown for elderly residents whom have borne the emotional weight and asphyxiation of quarantine longer than anyone in Gibraltar.

The Charles Bruzon House residency suffers, according to residents, from a crisis of bureaucratic mismanagement. To enter and leave the building visitors and residents require to be signed in and out by wardens. This is standard procedure for other residences who also hire security to ward entrances. However, this is not the point of contention. Rather, it is the arbitrary loops and impasses through which residents at Charles Bruzon House need to go at unnecessary lengths to overcome for the necessary task of throwing away their rubbish. It is a point of contention which readily discloses to us a pressing need for a more reciprocal form of communication between the public and its services.

“I see it very bad that old people, the elderly who have to take the rubbish out, have to go out from the small lift that you cannot access on the way back; and then you throw the rubbish you have to walk all the way down to the other entrance, and you have to give your flat number again even if you have just gone out to throw your rubbish.” The PANORAMA was lead to the second floor of the garage door and down to the ground floor where the rubbish was disposed. Every other door in the garage was inaccessible from the outside, thereby forcing residents to either return to the second floor entrance (residents who could be up to 90 years of age) or leave the building and sign themselves in again. “All the doors are locked! All the access doors are locked!”

Charles Bruzon’s – paying – residents are therefore simultaneously under strict regulation and observation for [their] public health and safety and also forced to be exposed to the public – and potentially the virus – for doors which, the residents confirm, have been asked to be repaired numerous times. “Another thing”, said an anonymous source, “as from the first of June the rubbish before was collected by the wardens and everything.

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08-06-2020 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR