A businessman abandons an 'undocumented' employee who had an accident in a hospital in Mataró – «Take off your work clothes; if not, you screw us all, "he said

«I went to work at seven in the morning, as always, and I began to make some protectors for a ship's exhaust pipe. I was putting one of the parts through the lathe when my hand caught. It was in a moment, without realizing it. 'I've lost my hand!' I yelled at my partner. He called the boss and handed me the phone. 'Have you hurt yourself a lot?' he asked me. 'A lot,' I told him. He told me that he had to go to the hospital. 'But first you have to take off your work clothes. If not, you screw us all ».

Between sobs, and anguished at having to relive an episode that won't let him sleep, JAN, 41 years old and born in Ecuador, recalled yesterday by phone how on January 12 he lost his left hand in a work accident in Vilassar de Mar (Barcelona). The man was working on a three-roller machine that bends parts when his hand got caught and the machine crushed it. He had been without a contract for a year and a half because he had been left without a work permit. Before, he had worked three years with the mandatory registration in Social Security. The owner of the workshop is released waiting for the judge to summon him

"I don't want to talk about anything. Everything is in the courts and I prefer to consult with my lawyers first”, Jaume Comas, owner of the CMN company, where JAN worked and dedicated to the manufacture of nautical accessories, excused himself yesterday.

The Mossos d'Esquadra arrested Comas and a company manager for having concealed that the man was employed irregularly when he suffered the accident. The employer is accused of crimes against workers, omission of the duty to help and obstruction of justice. To the person in charge, omission of the duty of relief and concealment. Both are free, waiting for the judge to summon them.

«I listened [to the bosses]. With scissors I tore off my jersey, helped by my partner. On the way to the hospital they told me: 'When they ask you how you did it, say it was on the jetty'. But I didn't know what the jetty was. They insisted: "Fishing, say that you have been fishing and that a stone has fallen into your hand," continues JAN

According to his account, the person in charge of the workshop in Vilassar de Mar where he worked took him by car to the Mataró hospital. "In the ER, the person in charge said: 'I found him on the street. His hand is dusty.' And there he left me. When I woke up, my hand had been amputated."

"When a person has an accident like this, you have to call an ambulance and immediately notify the police and the Labor inspectorate," he laments. Borja Masramón, the lawyer who, on behalf of the Ecuadorian Consulate in Barcelona, the Federation of Ecuadorian Entities of Catalonia and the National Secretariat for Migrants of Ecuador (SENAMI), defends the victim.

At first JAN even thought about returning to Ecuador, but his colleagues and the people from the Ecuadorian consulate in Barcelona encouraged him to file a complaint. His priority is to legalize his situation in Spain, a country to which he emigrated eight years ago with the idea of having a better life, where he got married and had his daughter. Now he fears that the baby will be scared to see him without a hand.

He asks himself: "What am I going to do without a hand?" And the answer is: "No one is going to give me a job."