Dozens of solar farm workers gathered outside a police station in NSW’s central west to protest “police inaction” after being allegedly targeted in a string of thefts.
Clapping and chanting “safety is a right” as they rallied outside the Wellington Police Station on Wednesday night, the workers called for the introduction of a 24-hour police station and an increase in resources to battle crime.
Argentinian Isidro Hijano told The Feed he doesn’t feel safe in Wellington after his house was broken into and his belongings were stolen on Monday.
Solar farm workers gathering outside the police station in NSW. Source: Supplied
After working a 12-hour day at the solar farm, Isidro and his housemates arrived home to find a door broken and clothes and belongings strewn over the floors of their bedrooms.
Isidro said his passport, headphones, baggage and driver’s licence were missing.
Footage seen by The Feed shows the extent to which the thieves ransacked the house.
Isidro said his housemates’ cameras, computers, electrical shavers and credit cards were also stolen.
“I feel bad for my housemates because they took a lot of things, not just material objects but things that we bought from Argentina, things that are memories,” he said.
One of the houses that was allegedly robbed. Source: Supplied
Isidro and his housemates called the police but he said they took over an hour to arrive and then made jokes about a PlayStation being stolen.
“After that, we avoided the police because they didn't do anything, they make jokes,” he said.
Isidro said the next day, he heard the house of a friend - about five blocks away - was broken into on Tuesday afternoon.
That sharehouse is also filled with migrants and backpackers working on the solar farm.
“They took bags, computers, GoPros, things like that,” Isidro said.
“My friends said they called the police and they took four hours to arrive.”
Australian Jack Murphy and Argentinian Isidro Hijano both work on the solar farm in Wellington. Source: Supplied
The Feed has heard from several people in Wellington who claim up to six homes have been broken into in the past week and even fuel stolen from inside a car.
Australian Jack Murphy feels that migrants and solar farm workers are being targeted. He believes this is because they have to catch a bus to the farm and leave their cars and houses unattended for most of the day.
Jack has been working on the solar farm for about a year and a half and said Wellington is a “dangerous place”.
He said one of his friends, who works on the same solar farm, also had his home broken into while he was asleep three months ago.
“They took PlayStations, computers, wallets, passports, it was pretty crazy,” Jack told The Feed.
Jack feels police are severely under-resourced and there is little they can do to manage crime in the area.
“The station isn’t 24 hours, it closes at 3am,” he said.
“There’s hundreds of workers out here from foreign countries and all the locals. I just can’t believe there’s only two police officers at one time in the place.”
Break-ins have generally declined over the past year across NSW, including in Dubbo and Wellington, according to data from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Map shows incidents of breakins in "dwellings" from April 2020 to March 2021 in Wellington, NSW. Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research
that nearby Dubbo had the second-highest amount of break and enters reported in the state since March 2020.
Wellington was also among the 15th highest suburbs in NSW when it came to break and enters over the past two years.
A spokesperson at NSW Police told The Feed, “the rate of property-related crime in Wellington remains stable.”
“Police want to reassure the community that appropriate proactive taskings based on crime trends are made to meet the needs of the Wellington area,” the spokesperson said.
“The Orana Mid-Western Police District Officer In Charge of Wellington Police Station will continue to work closely with concerned members of the community who attended Wellington Police Station about 7pm yesterday.”
The NSW Police spokesperson said all police positions in the area "are flexible resources available to respond to incidents across the district."
They said Dubbo Police Station, which is about an hour's drive from Wellington, provides a 24-hour response and that in the event of an emergency "local police are recalled to duty."
“Resources from Dubbo – including the Proactive Crime Team, highway patrol and high visibility police – are managed centrally but can be, and are, deployed to Wellington to respond to community needs and changing crime patterns or emerging issues,” the spokesperson said.
Police and Emergency Services Minister David Elliott told The Feed "crimes of this nature will not be tolerated."
"The NSW Government is committed to ensuring there is appropriate resourcing of police across the state and is delivering 1500 additional police over four years, as part of a $583 million investment into community safety,” Mr Elliot said.
“Since the announcement in 2019, the Orana Mid-Western Police District has added nine additional officers and the NSW Government remains committed to providing more officers in those areas that need them.”
Isidro told The Feed he feels saddened by the spate of robberies across Wellington.
“We came to Australia because we love this place. We feel safe here,” he said.
“But what’s happened to us in the last few days, it’s scary to us.”
