migrant workers

 

PHOTO: ROBYN EDIE Maria Silva, 52, left, and Pablo Coelho, 37, both from Brazil, at their accommodation in the Queenstown Lakeview Holiday Park.

Crammed into tiny campground cabins, members of Queenstown’s migrant workforce look down on luxury from a hill above the CBD. It has been home to some for over a decade but as the council clears the cabins to make way for a $1 billion development, many face homelessness. JO MCKENZIE-MCLEAN reports. 

Maria Silva grimaces as she repositions herself on a stool in her kitchen. Her hands are pulled behind her as she massages her injured back. She can’t get comfortable and moves about 1.2 metres to her bed beside the fridge, against a white-painted brick wall.

The 52-year-old Brazilian hotel cook keeps a tidy home – a cabin at the Lakeview Holiday Park in Queenstown where she has lived for the past 10 years. It wasn’t always that way.

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