The Ministry of the Interior of Fernando Grande-Marlaska has just given the latest bad news to prison officials: inmates have priority vaccination over the personnel who assist Spanish prisons. The complaint about the treatment of officials has already been transferred to the Government by the CSIF union. And it is that “the Interior has forgotten its prison officials and begins to vaccinate the prisoners”, as indicated by the union. All this, despite the fact that prison officials share the same sources of contagion as inmates and, on top of that, they take the infections home at the end of the working day. One in four officials has not yet received a dose. A fact that has led CSIF to study legal actions against the Ministry’s treatment of prison officials. Prisons throughout Spain have already begun vaccinating the prison population despite the fact that about 7,000 officials (a quarter of the workforce) has not yet received even a dose of immunization, a situation that for the Central Sindical Independiente y de Servants (CSIF), the majority union at the table of the Ministry of the Interior, clearly represents a breach of the vaccination protocol. The group of Penitentiary Institutions was framed in the vaccination protocol within group 3B, together with public health personnel, health and social health personnel from different fields, physiotherapists or professionals from pharmacy offices. With the suspension ordered by the health authorities of vaccination with AstraZeneca, thousands of prison workers were left unvaccinated even with the first dose.Subsequent modifications to the vaccination plan have not wanted to address and solve the problem. And the result is none other than the fact that these workers are still not vaccinated and seeing how other colleagues in the Public Administration who work with the same conditions are. Vaccines for inmates In addition, prison officials now contemplate how thousands of vaccines They are reaching the prisons destined for the inmate population, while those responsible for their surveillance are still unimmunized. Thus, in prisons such as Castellón II, 50% of the staff have not yet received the first dose. In view of this situation, CSIF has sent a complaint to the General Directorate of Penitentiary Institutions and is studying legal actions. And it is that the discomfort of the professional staff grows while they feel helpless by their superiors. Penitentiary Institutions, for their part, have responded to those affected by avoiding their responsibilities and now point to the health ministries of the autonomous communities as guilty of this situation . In addition, the circumstance occurs that with the end of the state of alarm it is foreseeable that Penitentiary Institutions will proceed to return to normality, reopening communications with the outside (visits and vis a vis) in almost all prisons in Spain , which, with a very high probability, will increase the risk of contagion for workers and their families. It must be remembered that the comparative treatment of prisoners and officials has already given rise to talk. In fact, the group of ETA prisoners was demanding from the Government of Pedro Sánchez an accelerated vaccination against the coronavirus for terrorists who are serving time.EH Bildu joined that demand from the first moment. And all this, despite the fact that the Basque Government of Iñigo Urkullu accelerated the vaccination of ETA prisoners automatically. It did so even before the agreement between the autonomous communities with the Ministry of Health. The Interterritorial Commission of the National Health System decided last Wednesday, March 31, to vaccinate them, at the latest, along with the population of Group 8. In that group are including Spaniards between 56 and 65 years old. The government of Iñigo Urkullu, however, began the vaccination several days before. Specifically on Sunday, March 28.
