A charity supporting Ukrainian refugees says the UK Government has failed to grant a single visa to any of the people it is trying to help.
The Homes for Ukraine scheme was branded a ‘gimmick’ with ‘tortuous and confusing’ forms
Positive Action in Housing warned of the danger posed by potential human traffickers adding that in the past week alone it has been helping 483 Ukrainian families, young people and unaccompanied minors looking for a sponsor who will shelter them.Robina Qureshi, director of the charity – which runs Room for Refugees, the UK’s longest-running refugee hosting programme which has been in place since 2002 – said: ‘The Government made a fanfare of its Homes for Ukraine Community sponsorship programme.
She said: ‘Unaccompanied minors, young women, women with young children, have told us they met someone on social media who offered to be a sponsor under Homes for Ukraine. She warned that human traffickers ‘thrive on refugee conflicts and displacements anytime there are vulnerable populations on the move’, labelling the scheme a ‘gimmick’ which she said ‘has resulted in obvious and dangerous breaches of basic safeguarding on an industrial scale – all instigated by one Government Department’.
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