Penny dropping (Day 72)
A glimmer of optimism. I finally have the feeling there is the beginning of a public dialogue in Austria about what needs to change. We have distributed 400-500 grocery gift cards of €50 in 16 days.
Yesterday was a good day. Yesterday it finally felt for the first time in a looooonnnng time that people care, that the public conversation was shifting towards discussing the real challenges faced by Ukrainians in Austria. I was flooded with messages like the above from grateful women who received the €50 Hofer gift cards for groceries. Heart emojis and texts of appreciation and many, many photos of grocery carts and food pilled on kitchen tables.
On my way to the train station in the morning, I turned on a local radio station and was pleasantly surprised to hear a news report on how the financial support Ukrainians are receiving in Austria is insufficient. Their argument was a longer-term one, namely, that those who stay for longer should be entitled to the same kinds of social benefits as citizens and legal residents, which is not yet the case, as Ukrainians are being given a legal status akin to “temporary protection”. I think you can listen to the report here.
A member of parliament, Stephanie Krisper (Neos) then came to meet me at the train station. The first to ever reach out to me, from any party, and I was pleasantly surprised she wanted to meet at the train station and not her office. I cannot vote in Austria, have no political party loyalties, and will be happy to talk about what needs to be fixed in Austria to help the Ukrainian women and children here to any member of any political party. Except, no one ever asked. Until yesterday.
We walked around the station and I showed Stephanie what happens when people first arrive: ticket counters if moving onwards, to charity desk if staying in Austria. I showed the ticket counters where I spend most of my time, and pointed out: lounge area, cafeteria long walk this way, here are the snacks between platforms 6 and 7. There we met a group of six women from three Ukrainian families. They are living in Burgenland. Have been here one month, moved once from one small town to another, and have not yet received any state money. One of the women is actually a local MP in Kharkiv, for Zelensky’s party. The two politicians exchanged contact details. Three Hofer cards were distributed. I ran to the Billa downstairs to buy quickly three replacements.
When the train from Hungary rolled it, it wasn’t as full as usual (the railroads had been bombed the day before by Russia and there were delays across Ukraine as a result), but the people arriving continued to come from the south: Odesa, Mykolaiv, and continued to ask for onward tickets: Belgium, Germany. Some are surprised when you have to say, sorry, tonight the night train is sold out, you are going to have to wait until tomorrow. And then you explain they must go to the charity and ask where they can sleep. I do not know now where people are being housed, because I cannot be present for these conversations, as I am usually alone or nearly alone at the ticket counters. The line is only busy for an hour or so, at least mid-day, so I try to come exactly to help with this rush. McDonalds cards to families with kids, explain you must reserve seats for €3.50 each for longer trips, make sure everyone is more or less figured out.
A young woman from Bucha came to get a Hofer card from me with one of the moms, Zhenya, you will remember from the interview they gave to ORF which is unfortunately no longer online because the local TV only keeps the links up for 7 days (oh, Austria…). Zhenya told me she could no longer get free diapers at the center she was used to getting them from. I was surprised to hear, but passed on the details of another location in Vienna, a charity center for mom and kids. Ultimately, though, we don’t want Ukrainian moms to be running around town in search of free diapers. We want them to be financially stable enough in Austria to be able to buy diapers on their own. Like everyone else does.
The young woman from Bucha wants to go home for a few days, to get some things (I take it she fled in a terrible hurry under terrible circumstances), asks me about tickets back. I tell her how full the trains are heading back to Ukraine right now. Both free tickets to the borders and paid tickets to Kyiv.
I then went out side to give Stephanie an interview. I didn’t know I wold have to be on camera. I wasn’t dressed for it. But it was fine. At this point I just want to get my message across to anyone who will listen. And she gave me that opportunity. Thank you. I told her I never watch the videos of myself. It’s better that way. During the interview I tried to say as simply as possible what is not working: the social payments are far too small and many, especially outside of Vienna, have not received them at all yet. In other words, they have been in Austria since March and have not received a single Euro from the Austrian government, cash in hand.
I then had to run back in and meet Tanja, from Belarus, who is a longtime resident of Austria and is running a charity center for Ukrainian moms and kids in Austria. I gave her 6 Hofer cards to distribute to families in need she knows personally. Tanja is in the stuff distribution business. She provides Ukrainian mothers with diapers, baby food, used clothes, whatever they need for their new housing. She told me she can even ship care packages to women in other parts of Austria. Amazing. I immediately forwarded her contact details to a few moms in need.
In the meantime, my phone is blowing up with messages asking for Hofer cards, thanking me for Hofer cards, asking when their card will arrive, etc. Often, I have no idea how they got my number. And yes, summer clothes are the next problem.
And then I learned this:
When I got home, I tried something new. Ordering online non-perishable items for a mom with a 3 year old and a 16 year old living in a rural location with an Austrian family.
And then this happened.
The rest of my day was spent on “grocery card distribution”. I finally did a little cuont of how many cards we have handed out until now. I was amazed by the results. Between 400-500 cards of €50 each. Between €20,000-25,000 of direct grocery aid to Ukrainian families living in Austria. Over 16 days. With all of your generous donations, and the power of smartphones and social media. Without even an assistant. Thankfully we live in a country where the post office works. So far only two have gotten lost as far as I know. I sent a second card, and said if the first eventually does arrive, just pass it on to a friend.
But the work is not over yet. I still receive more requests than I have grocery cards. I am working as fast as I can but it is not fast enough. Which brings us to…
…the real problem. The real problem is this:
I had a situation yesterday which I will not name names about and try to describe as neutrally as possible. Because the names are not important. What is important is that organizations are not talking to each other, and journalists are not digging deep enough.
I tweeted about a Ukrainian in Upper Austria who arrived in March and has not yet seen any payments. In my tweet, I included the name of the charity in charge of handing out state money, because I translated the woman’s message, and in her mind, it is the charity handing out the money. In her mind, those are the people not paying her. How should she be able to differentiate who is not paying her when the charity is her only point of contact with the Austrian state?
There are thousands of such cases. Mostly not in Vienna. Many people who arrived in early March when the systems (if we can call it that) were not up and running. New “systems” were built, and the early arrivals seem to have gotten lost. Not all, but many. There is no rhyme or reason as to who got paid and who didn’t. We know this from the polling data in the Telegram groups (more on that next time! fascinating live data).
A major Austrian newspaper ran with my tweet, but never asked me for the woman’s contact details to ask her to tell her story firsthand. The Ukrainian woman mentioned a charity name in her message to me, because that charity distributes the state money (yes, they are paying out cash like it’s 1985). But the money comes from the state. So as it turns out it is the state (meaning local government Upper Austria) which hasn’t authorised the payment to the woman yet (hence her comment “I’m not on the list”), but the charity was upset with me for my tweet which they thought made it look like they aren’t doing their job.
At one point, mid-day, they tried to tell me the woman had been paid, at which point I asked again, and no, she definitely had not been paid. I got upset and the idea of some bureaucrat somewhere in a local government office calling a Ukrainian refugee a liar. It feels like an information black hole within the official response. I was asked to delete my tweet. You can imagine what my response was. I nearly exploded inside McDonalds where I was buying €10 vouchers as I read it. I will not be deleting my tweet. It is a direct translation of a screenshot of a message I received from a Ukrainian in Austria.
To clarify: the charity cannot pay the women if the government does not give them the money to do so. The bottleneck here does appear to be with the local state (Upper Austria) government. But the organizations working together need to fix this, and of course in the eyes of the Ukrainian recipients, they don’t differentiate who is at fault, they just need money.
This could all be a single bank transfer electronically I cannot understand how this madness is even a system designed for anything other than to drive everyone involved crazy. I assume that’s the point.
Back and forth an entire day about just one woman’s case. The charity really tried to figure out what the heck was going on. And reader, do you think she got paid? No. Still not. She arrived 15 minutes too late to the local charity office and was told to come back on Monday. And the charity still cannot pay her until the state (in this case, the local government of Upper Austria), puts her on a list of approved Ukrainians to get paid. And she is not on that list yet, because she moved address once.
In the end, there were friendly messages from the charity emphasising they too think the state money isn’t enough. It was totally surreal. And still many thousands of people are waiting for €215 per adult and €100 per child and really minimal rent subsidies and it is just maddening. I remain convinced it is a system on purpose designed for failure by a conservative ruling government that does not want Ukrainians in Austria. Period.
It reminds me of the covid crisis. Federal government allocates money, the states (there are 9 in Austria) have to execute. 9 states, 9 different solutions. All a mess. Vienna slightly better than the rest but not great. It is the same thing for the Ukrainians, except the government gets away with such incompetent execution and insufficient aid because in this case its “clients” cannot vote. A mess.
So there we are. I have to run and stuff 10 Billa cards into envelopes (a doctor friend of my husband’s was so kind and bought 10 x €50 from his local Billa, but by accident 7 of them were “Reisen” (travel) cards and then it took him like a week to get his money back! Also Austria.) More “appointments” at the train station today. But feeling positive. Feeling like there is some momentum. At least a public dialogue has started. That is a good sign. It means people care and Austrians are frankly really upset they pay their taxes and this happens. Nothing happens, in many cases. That is not ok and this unites everyone in asking the government what the heck is going on. Hopefully the pressure will increase soon to fix things. I can imagine a few digital solutions which might remove a LOT of the middlemen. Wink wink.
Thanks for reading. Sorry for the delay. I think Stephanie will release her video today and then I will share. There I am speaking in English, thankfully!