Criticism of the Government delegate in Ceuta for alluding to the lack of Moroccan "girls" to attend to homes

Statements by the Government delegate in Ceuta, Salvadora Mateos, made on April 1, on the consequences of the prolonged closure of the border with Morocco, have unleashed a storm of criticism of the socialist leader.

Mateos, after ruling out an immediate opening of the border crossing, alluded to the problems caused by the interruption of the flow of people between the two countries;

many of them, domestic workers.

"In Ceuta, especially the housewives, we are looking forward to the girls, starting with me...", said the delegate.

And she added, with a smile: "Being working here in the morning and cleaning in the afternoon is really hard."

Progressive sectors from Ceuta have made a comment that they consider "shameful" ugly.

From the Ceuta Ya political platform, successor to the localist Caballas formation, Mateos has been referred to as "classist".

Suad Ahmed, Secretary of Care and Social Welfare of the formation, has criticized the delegate's words "for their approach, for conveying the idea that the real 'victims' of the border closure are not the workers themselves but the privileged women who They have been left without anyone cleaning their houses.”

Sources from the Government Delegation point out that Mateos used a "colloquial and non-derogatory" term, used on the street both in Ceuta and Melilla to informally name domestic employees, although it was not, they admit, the most appropriate to refer to. cross-border women workers who have been affected by the border blockade.

border closure

The border between Morocco and Spain has been closed for two years, since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. At the end of March, the Government announced a new extension of the closure, at least until May, which dashed hopes that the passage opened quickly after normalizing diplomatic relations between Spain and Morocco after a year of tension due to the dispute over Western Sahara.

The presidents of both cities were satisfied with the gesture made by the Government of Pedro Sánchez, which supported Morocco's autonomy plan for the Sahara over the self-determination process sponsored by the UN for decades.

Both have recognized, however, the need to regulate access and bring order.

The situation in which thousands of cross-border workers have been left in these two years is one of the main concerns.

“There are Melillans here, many, including me, who continue to send money through Western Union so that the employees who came to work or acquaintances or family members can survive,” Eduardo de Castro, president of Melilla expelled from Ciudadanos, also acknowledged a few days ago.

"They have continued to send money because they had nothing," he insisted.

Soraya (not her real name to protect her identity) returned to Morocco in February 2021, only after her employer, an elderly and dependent Spanish woman, died of covid.

She had remained in Melilla for almost a year since the border closure: in March 2020 she considered that her duty was to stay at the home of the woman she cared for.

On the other side, in Morocco, her husband was left in charge of her baby, before whom she shed tears every time they spoke by videoconference to say good night during the eleven months they were without seeing each other or hugging.

no income

For many cross-border workers, the closure has been a real catastrophe.

Tens of thousands of Moroccans who worked daily in the autonomous cities, with or without a contract, saw their income suddenly disappear.

They could not benefit from the ERTE approved by the Government during the months of confinement, and employers and businessmen who had cross-border staff were left without aid to maintain the Social Security contributions of these workers.

Only between March and July 2020, Ceuta and Melilla lost more than half of registrations in Social Security in the domestic workers regime.

As of March 2022, the figures were below 500 registrations, compared to 1,711 and 2,157 affiliations in February 2020 in Melilla and Ceuta, respectively.

More than 90% of domestic workers in the two autonomous cities are Moroccan women, which represents around 10% of Moroccan employment in the sector at the national level and 3% of non-EU foreigners in the industry, according to data from the Social Security.

Despite the fact that they contribute more than any national (23%), they do not receive unemployment benefits because there is no reciprocity agreement between Spain and Morocco.

The stagnation of the closure of the border has also paralyzed the renewal of work permits and has forced Social Security to manage automatic withdrawals and with retroactive effect, making it difficult for those who did not return home to Morocco to complete paperwork.

In 2021, and during the border crisis in Ceuta, many men and women took the opportunity to cross into the autonomous city in the hope of getting their jobs back or formalizing their expired permits.

This is the case of Samira, a resident of Fnideq, seven kilometers from Ceuta, who spoke with EL PAÍS on May 18, 2021, just after starring in a desperate flight with her son to return to the city where she earned 400 euros a month for cleaning and cooking in a house.

Her employer had continued to send her part of her salary since the previous year, but it was not enough to support the whole family with an unemployed husband and two more daughters: "People in Morocco have nothing, they do nothing," she said then. Samira.