Bid to get city’s refugees connected

THE British Red Cross’s Refugee Support Team in Bristol is raising money for smartphones for asylum seekers who are destitute or placed in hotels across the city. It is working in partnership with Bristol Defend Asylum Seekers Campaign.

It comes as new figures obtained by the Refugee Council show the asylum backlog has increased fourfold in the past five years, with over 40,000 people waiting a year or more for their asylum claim to be processed by the Home Office. Those in hotel rooms have a weekly allowance of £8.25 and do not legally have the right to work. In Bristol the British Red Cross currently supports 200 asylum seekers and most do not have mobile phones.

Qerim Nuredini arrived in Bristol in 1999 to seek asylum after escaping violence in Kosovo. He is now the refugee service manager in Bristol for the British Red Cross and decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign for mobiles after seeing first-hand the everyday difficulties faced by asylum seekers in the city without mobiles.

He said: “Most people we see in the hotels do not have phones, either because they have been retained by the Home Office as evidence for their asylum claim, or because they simply did not have one.”

The charity plans to raise £2,250 online via a JustGiving online fundraising page to buy 50 refurbished second-hand mobile phones at £45 each.