This file from 1973 contains press reports including an article giving accounts of separated Ugandan Asian families. (T353/112)
Transcript
The Times, 26th September 1973
250 Asian families cut off from fathers.
By Christopher Walker.
An estimated 250 Uganda Asian families in Britain are still without their fathers because of the “harsh and arbitrary” rulings of British immigration policy, the Coordinating Committee for the welfare of Evacuees from Uganda said in its report released yesterday.
The committee said that a Mrs Khinji had been living at a Dover guest house for the past 10 weeks with her three children at an estimated cost of £57 a week to Kent social services department. “Her husband is stateless and at present in Belgium. If he and many like him were let in, there families would cease being a burden to the British taxpayer”, Miss Helene Middleweek, a co-author of the report, said.
Some wives of Ugandan Asians stranded in India are still being looked after at one of the two remaining resettlement camps, West Malling, in Kent.
The Committee criticised the Government’s attempt to divide Britain into “red’ and ‘green’ areas for Asians.
“The policy of offering assistance to families wishing to go to ‘green’ areas but not ‘red’ ones meant that many of the refugees who had relatives or friends already here, almost inevitably in ‘red’ areas, by-passed the board completely.”
The report blames low pay, unemployment of some members of large families, high rents and the administrative practices of the Supplementary Benefits Commission for the poverty of some of the self-settled Asians.
Student awaits decision: A Uganda citizen aged 23 was in a detention building at Heathrow Airport yesterday, waiting to learn if his third attempt to join his family in Britain would succeed (a Staff Reporter writes).
He is Mr Uday Kant Kava, a Ugandan Asian student, whose parents, brother and sister live in Keighley, Yorkshire, and had to leave Uganda after President Amin’s ruling a year ago. They are British citizens.
Mr Kava has twice been refused entry to Britain. He was studying in India when his family had to leave Uganda but came to Britain on September 3.Three days later he was put on a flight to Brussels. He came back again the same day but on Monday this week he was again sent back to Brussels after Mr David Lane, Under-Secretary at the Home Office, had ruled that he could not stay.
On Monday night, however, Mr Kava flew in from Brussels and said the Belgian authorities would not admit him.
Board Chairman rejects report on refugees:
Sir Charles Cunningham, chairman of the Uganda Resettlement Board, said last night that he did not accept the report of the Coordinating Committee for the Welfare of Evacuees from Uganda as a fair description of the situation. He said in a statement:
Of the 28,500 Uganda Asians who have passed through the board’s hands on arrival in this country, 22,000 have been accommodated temporarily in 16 resettlement centres provided by the board. Of these, only about 750 now remain in two centres, one of which closes next week. Of the 22,000, the board has, due to the generous response of the British public, found accommodation for some 11,000 in houses provided by local authorities or private individuals.
While a proportion of Asians now living in the community -especially those who made their own arrangements to do so- are in unsatisfactory accommodation and are experiencing difficulties, the information available from surveys carried out for the board all over the country refutes any suggestion that ‘the vast majority joined the homeless, the unemployed and the socially deprived’. Some 80 percent of those capable of employment are working. There is ample evidence that many have settled satisfactorily and are making a success of their new life.
The board is giving financial aid to assist local authorities with initial resettlement, including the employment by a number of local authorities of full time social workers. In addition, the board has provided Gujarati translations of guidance leaflets on social security and employment; it has arranged two day courses for community relations officers in areas where large numbers of Uganda Asians have settled; and is paying the cost of an expert employed by the advisory centre for education. To supplement normal statutory services, teams of WRVS volunteers are visiting Ugandan Asian families in areas where there is no community relations officer.