Asylum seekers housed on barge in UK call on government to speed up processing of their cases

Several dozen asylum seekers, housed on board a barge in the south of England, demonstrated on Monday, July 15. They are demanding that the new Labour government speed up the processing of their applications, reports the local NGO Stand up to Racism Dorset.

Between 60 and 100 people accommodated on Bibby Stockholma barge deployed to reduce the bill for hotel nights, took part in the movement. They called on the government to “speed up the examination of their asylum application” For “leave the barge” And “find a job and a safe place to live”the association wrote in a Facebook post, saying that local residents had joined in to express their solidarity.

According to a spokesperson for the association, all the men housed on Bibby Stockholm have been waiting for more than a year to hear their fate, leading to a “significant deterioration in their mental health”One of them described the boat, which had been in use for almost a year, as the “barge from hell”Designed to house up to 500 asylum seekers, the barge has been denounced by opponents as a “floating prison”A man died there last December, with some associations suggesting suicide.

While the new Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced the abandonment of the project to send irregular migrants to Rwanda, which the Conservatives have never managed to implement, it has not said whether it intends to abandon the use of this barge, moored in the port of Portland. On the other hand, it has set itself the objective of reducing the delays in processing asylum applications and of deploying a command responsible for border security, for which resources inspired by the fight against terrorism have been promised.