G4S, Serco British refugee housing scandal

This video from Australia says about itself:

Serco does not like it when refugees get to have human contact

Leonora 2012, Day 1.

Between the 26th and the 29th of January 2012, the Refugee Rights Action Network went to Leonora to visit the 160 unaccompanied children that the Australian Government has locked up, by themselves, in immigration detention.

When we arrived there, we were told by Serco that they had explained who we are to the boys (and that we came with gifts), and that they were told that no one inside wanted visitors or the MP3 players or arts supplies we brought with us. As usual, they lied.

And Australia is not the only country where Serco, and their G4S fellow mercenaries, treat refugees problematically.

By Conrad Landin in Britain:

Damp, Squalid and Infested with Rats

Tuesday 31st January 2017

The shocking state of Britain’s housing for refugees

REFUGEES are being housed in “disgraceful” accommodation full of rats and rot, a damning report from MPs says today.

A probe by the home affairs select committee found that the Home Office and outsourcing giants Serco and G4S have failed to ensure vulnerable people are safely provided for.

The report, published this morning, slams the government’s inspection, compliance and complaints regimes for asylum-seeker accommodation.

It says one woman’s kitchen was “full of mice” who “even ran across the dining table while we were eating.”

Another refugee found rats in his home — triggered flashbacks of being tortured in a prison cell in his home country.

It says ministers have failed to adequately disperse refugees, with asylum-seekers “concentrated in a small number of the most deprived areas.”

Prime Minister Theresa May’s own borough of Windsor and Maidenhead had not housed a single dispersed asylum-seeker, according to figures for the third quarter of 2016 published in the report.

The committee says councils should be forced to take refugees if they do not do so voluntarily.

Committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper fumed: “The state of accommodation for some asylum-seekers and refugees in this country is a disgrace. And the current contract system just isn’t working. Major reforms are needed.

“We have come across too many examples of vulnerable people in unsafe accommodation, for example children living with infestations of mice, rats or bed bugs, lack of healthcare for pregnant women, or inadequate support for victims of rape and torture. No-one should be living in conditions like that.”

Labour shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said it was “simply unacceptable.”

The committee also said the current system of contracting out housing provision should be scrapped.

Currently asylum support services are outsourced via six regional contracts, and then subcontracted to a complex web of providers.

Clearsprings Group, which holds two of the franchises, is the only provider with experience of asylum accommodation.

The other four contracts are held by the controversial outsourcing giants Serco and G4S.

The MPs found the system had prevented councils from imposing standards and that a catalogue of contractual breaches have been met with inadequate and inconsistent penalties.

Civil Service union PCS said the crisis was “inseparable” from the underfunding of public services.

“This is a harrowing account of how catastrophically and shamefully this government is failing asylum-seekers and the communities where they live,” the union’s general secretary Mark Serwotka said.

“The Home Office must be given the resources to process claims efficiently, so people are not left in limbo, and the profit motive must be removed so central and local government can plan properly how to provide this vital public service.”

Charities campaigning for the rights of refugees welcomed the report.

Freedom from Torture senior policy adviser Lucy Gregg said: “Time and time again we see shocking examples of how suppliers of asylum housing are failing to meet their most basic obligations, forcing survivors of torture to live in inappropriate, poorly-maintained and unsafe accommodation.”

And Natasha Walter, from the charity Women for Refugee Women, said: “We work with many women who have suffered extreme human rights abuses and who find that the accommodation they are offered in the asylum process is completely unsuitable for their needs.”

STRIKES across four London hospitals today expose the scandal of NHS privatisation as low-paid workers fight multinational privateer Serco for a pay rise: here.

‘WE WANT a pay rise!’ said over 200 striking Bart’s NHS Trust ancillary workers employed by privateer SERCO at the trust’s four London hospitals: here.

‘WE WANT a 3% pay rise. SERCO are making us work more for no extra money,’ Unite hospital worker Florence Kwao said yesterday on the second day of the 200 workers’ 48- hour strike: here.

ROYAL LONDON WORKERS BATTLE SERCO LOW PAY: here.

Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants blockade Serco HQ in Yarl’s Wood protest: here.

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