Crisis lays bare poverty in Geneva, as thousands queue for food

GENEVA (APP): In one of the world’s most expensive cities, thousands of people lined up Saturday for free food, as the COVID-19 crisis casts a spotlight on Geneva’s usually invisible poor.

In the Swiss city famous for its private banks, luxury watchmakers and fancy boutiques, people began lining up at 5:00 am (0300 GMT) Saturday, according to the association Caravane de Solidarite, the main organiser of the event.

By the time the distribution at Geneva’s Vernet hockey stadium began four hours later, the queue of p-eople, most wearing masks and standing two metres (six feet) apart, stretched and wound for about 1.5 kilometres (1 mile).

Organisers said they believed at least as many people had showed up as a week earlier, when well over 2,000 took part.

“We’re in a bit of a crescendo,” Silvana Mastromatteo, head of Caravane de Solidarite, told AFP, adding that Saturday’s distribution was the sixth the organisation had set up since the crisis began, with more and more people showing up each time.

“We need food,” Silvia Mango, a 64-year-old from the Philippines, said after waiting for three hours under a hot spring sun.

“Everything is just so much more difficult since the crisis began,” she said, adjusting the scarf draped over her mouth and nose, and acknowledged this is her second time accepting a hand-out.