Employees in Chisasibi’s Administrative Centre are breathing easier after renovations were promised on the poorly ventilated building that smells like gasoline.
After four years of complaints, 40 Cree School Board employees walked off their jobs on Jan. 16 to protest the bad air quality. The walk-out lasted two weeks.
“We said we would not come back until they fixed everything,” said one school board employee.
“It sometimes smells really bad. Youreyes are burning all the time. We’ve been asking them to do something about it for four years.”
Workers in the former arena report high rates of fainting, colds, headaches, sleepiness and nosebleeds.
“We’re always sick,” said the employee. “I’m sick all the time.”
The air vents for the building are right beside the fire station and a parking lot, where there are many trucks.
“It’s really bad when there’s a lot of gas fumes,” the employee added.
Fumes from a huge photocopier just hang in the air owing to the poor air circulation.
Irate employees were promised a year ago something would be done, but nothing happened, said the employee.
During the walk-out, the Quebec workers’safety board inspected the building and backed the workers. It found a poor humidity level: a level of only 10 per cent, compared to the usual
25 to 30 per cent.
The problems also affect workers of the Cree Board of Health and Social Services, also located in the building.
“It depends on where your office is,” said one employee.
“The closed offices is where the big problem is. Where the computer room is, that’s the only place where there’s air conditioning. For the computer, not for us. They don’t bother with us humans,” she said laughing.
She added, “In the summer, we’re suffocating. The windows don’t help. With the North wind, we’re okay. If it’s the other side, we’re roasting.”
Jimmy Neacappo has worked in the building for three years. He also sits on the board that runs the building for the Chisa-sibi band.
“The air is hardly circulating,” he said, noting that can sometimes smell diesel from the trucks idling outside the air vents.
“Quite often when I’m sitting in my office I get tired. What I do is I leave and once I go it’s gone. That would indicate we are breathing something other than air.”
Neacappo said a $35,000 contract has already been given to a Val d’Or engineering firm to move theair intakes to a side of the building where there are no vehicles. Better air ventilation will alsobe installed.
Air conditioning will be installed later, said Neacappo, who is also president of the James Bay Eeyou
Corporation.
