PROTESTERS will today demonstrate against the “dreadful conditions” faced by asylum seekers.
Stand Up To Racism will take part in a protest in Glasgow against the conditions asylum seekers have been living in since lockdown began.
On Friday, six people were stabbed by an asylum seeker at the city’s Park Inn hotel, which the group has said was “an avoidable tragedy”.
In a statement, the anti-racism group wrote: “Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, asylum seekers, asylum rights activists, charities and others in civic Scotland have been warning about the dreadful conditions faced by asylum seekers who were forced to move, often at no more than half-an-hour’s notice, from their settled homes and into inadequate hotel accommodation.
“The asylum seekers also had their paltry daily allowance of £5.39 removed.
“Unable to buy daily essentials or top-up mobile phones, they were isolated and often fed inadequate food. Many talked of feeling imprisoned in their hotel rooms.”
READ MORE: Glasgow attack: Home Office to move asylum seekers from hotels
The group is calling for the allowance to be re-instated, as well as a move back into longer-term housing.
It added that the Home Office and Mears Group, the company paid to house refugees, had “serious questions to answer”.
The statement continued: “Many asylum seekers are living with trauma or long-term mental health problems associated with their harrowing life experiences.
“Transferring them to isolated hotel rooms beside strangers, without suitable vulnerability checks by either Mears or the Home Office was always a terrible idea.
“There has been an overwhelming response to the call by the charity Positive Action in Housing and others for donations of clothing and other items for the asylum seekers who have had to be removed from the Park Inn hotel.
“Offered inadequate care by Mears Group and the Home Office, once again, they have been assisted by the good people of Glasgow.”
READ MORE: 'Tone-deaf' Tories blasted for asylum seeker treatment
The protest will take place outside the Home Office on Brand Street between 6pm and 7pm.Meanwhile, the UK Government has been accused of adopting a “tone-deaf” response to the needs of asylum seekers housed in hotels.
SNP MP Stewart McDonald questioned whether Chris Philp could have lived in one hotel room for several weeks during the coronavirus lockdown after the Home Office minister defended the support given to asylum seekers.
Philp earlier told the Commons his thoughts were with the victims of the “appalling knife attack” in Glasgow in which six people were injured, including a police officer.
Badreddin Abadlla Adam, 28, from Sudan, was shot dead by officers after the incident at the hotel on West George Street last Friday. Answering an urgent question, Philp said: “The UK has a statutory obligation to provide destitute asylum seekers with support while their case is being considered.
“While their cases are being considered, asylum seekers, who would otherwise be destitute, are provided with free accommodation, the utilities are paid for, council tax is paid for, free healthcare on the NHS is available, free education is available for those with children and there is a cash allowance to cover other essential living needs – recently increased by 5%, considerably more than inflation.”
Philp added there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus in respect of asylum seekers staying in hotels. Work is also ongoing to move people from hotels into “more permanent accommodation”, he said, before confirming talks between Home Office officials and Glasgow City Council on this issue took place on Monday afternoon.
McDonald, MP for Glasgow South, told the Commons: “Those of us who represent Glasgow are utterly horrified at the tone-deaf remarks from the minister when he talked about how lovely these hotel rooms are.
Philp said he would be meeting Glasgow MPs next week and the city council leader “shortly”.
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