GOVANHILL is being turned into a ghetto with conditions in some flats "not fit for a dog", MSPs were told.

GOVANHILL is being turned into a ghetto with conditions in some flats "not fit for a dog", MSPs were told.

The claims by the local housing association, shocked the Holyrood Petitions Committee.

Association director Anne Lear told them: "We now have mass overcrowding in the tenements and poverty we have not seen since the 1960s in the Gorbals - and I am not exaggerating."

She said the local population had soared from 10,000 to as many as 16,000 people over the last three years because of immigration, mainly of Slovakian Roma people.

The result, she said, was the creation of a ghetto in an area that already had: lThe highest drug overdose presentation to local hospitals in south east Glasgow.

lThe highest level of wife-battering and the second highest number of alcoholics in the south east area.

lThe highest level of serious crime in the city.

Ms Lear said the addition of at least another 4000 migrants who had "their own issues in terms of not being employable, not understanding their rights, living in overcrowded conditions and being used by unscrupulous landlords and gangmasters" caused problems for the entire community.

She said: "We feel the south-east of Govanhill has become a ghetto for the Roma migrants and for the community".

Ms Lear also told MSPs, as the Evening Times reported yesterday, that there was a "mass infestation of cockroaches, dampness, leaking roofs and tenement collapse".

Community solicitor Mike Dailly said there was severe overcrowding with 15 to 20 people in a two-bedroom flat with no hot water. "Conditions that are not fit for a dog."

He added: "These problems are exacerbated because gangmaster agencies then work hand in hand with the slum landlords to exploit these migrant workers."

Shettleston MSP Frank McAveety, who would normally have chaired the committee, stood down so he could contribute to the hearing. He warned the problem must "not be allowed to fester".

Stand-in convener John Farquhar Munro vowed to take the issue to Scottish Government ministers.