Mediaboss Marketing

About 12,000 Afghan refugees will begin 2022 in UK hotels as the government struggles to persuade enough councils to find permanent homes for the new arrivals, the Guardian has learned.

Of the 16,500 people airlifted from Afghanistan to the UK since August, over 4,000 individuals have either moved into a settled home or are in the process of being moved or matched to a suitable home, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The rest wait eagerly for news of where they will begin to rebuild their lives, though many say their hearts remain in Afghanistan, where they hope to return one day.

They will not be evenly distributed across the UK after the government decided not to force local authorities to rehouse the refugees. More than 300 local authorities in the UK have stepped up to offer permanent accommodation, according to a Home Office spokesperson.

According to the most recent figures, by the end of September, councils in Yorkshire and the Humber had welcomed 213 of the 770 Afghans resettled across the UK this year. Ninety-two of those were in Bradford, compared with just 24 across all the London councils. After Bradford, Edinburgh was the city to have resettled the most Afghans this year: 67.

As of 7 December, about 7,500 people had been relocated to the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap), which offered sanctuary to any current or former UK government employees who faced intimidation or a threat to their life.

Operation Pitting, the Afghan airlift in August, brought 15,000 people to the UK. Since the evacuation, a further 1,500 people have followed.

More than 12,000 Afghan evacuees remained in bridging accommodation as of 22 December, according to sources at both the DWP and Home Office. At least 4,000 of those are in London, according to London Councils, the local government association for Greater London.

London council officials described the situation in hotels as chaos and expressed particular concern about the unsuitability of hotels in the long term to accommodate the large number of children currently living in them.

Many now have community ties with London, children have started school and as time goes by it will be harder to uproot them and move them to a different part of the country where there is a greater supply of affordable accommodation. While the government made housing grants available for the new arrivals, none of the Afghans who arrived in the UK after 31 August are eligible for these grants.

The vast majority of Afghan refugees stuck in hotels are not able to work yet because they do not have permanent addresses and cannot guarantee to an employer that they will not be shipped across the country with minimal notice.

Benafsha Yaqoobi, a visually impaired commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, who has been living in a four-star central London hotel since August, said the local council had advised some Afghans that they could not work while they were stuck in the hotels.

Some guests were very excited to have found jobs, only to be told they could not take them, she said, because it was not known where they would be relocated, they could end up in Scotland.

Living in a hotel for so long was hard, said Yaqoobi, who is sharing a room with her husband, Mehdi Salami, who is also visually impaired. For me, for all Afghan people who are here, its very difficult, especially with Covid increasing these days. In a hotel and living like this, its not easy.

When the Guardian spoke to Yaqoobi in September, she pleaded for world leaders to help more disabled people flee Afghanistan. She continues to be very worried about the disabled children she used to help with her charity, the Rahyab Organisation, who she had to leave behind, and hopes to begin studying for a PhD.

Three months on, she has struck up a friendship with Mozghan Shaban, a DWP employee originally from Afghanistan, who spent several weeks going from hotel to hotel in London helping the new arrivals apply for universal credit.

The DWP had processed more than 3,000 claims for universal credit, as of 3 December, covering more than 4,700 people. The government legislated to exempt those arriving under the Afghan relocation and resettlement schemes from the usual residency tests which restrict access to certain benefits upon arrival in the UK.

Shaban, whose family fled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, can speak Farsi, one of the main Afghan languages, and was well placed to help the new arrivals navigate British bureaucracy.

She is well known around the hotels for her jokes, reassuring the guests that they do not need to fear their new country the worst youll get is rain. She describes herself as a therapist, mum, sister who helps them understand British customs and culture and particularly gender roles.

Some of the families who have come here are very, very traditional, she said. Its quite customary for a girl or woman to stand up and offer her seat to, say, her brother or her father. Thats just a thing that we do out of respect, because in Afghanistan men are treated as gods and women, not so much.

She preempts cultural misunderstandings too: I had to explain to people that if they go out on the street, dont stare too much at a woman. And to explain that the LGBTQ community is quite large here.

She has been amazed by the Afghans positivity: The energy that they have for life is just so inspiring. Theyve been knocked out several times over decades and decades of war and they still get up and theyre still willing to rebuild the life in a completely different country, not knowing the language, not knowing the environment, not knowing anything.

Follow this link:
12,000 Afghan refugees to start new year stuck in UK hotels - The Guardian