The National Council of Gujarati Organisations (NCGO) UK is leading a campaign in favour of thousands of Indian skilled workers in the healthcare and other sectors who find themselves stranded for no fault of theirs and threatened with deportation.
Since March, previously unmonitored care providers in England acting as sponsors for migrants are required to register with industry regulator Care Quality Commission (CQC) – a move the UK government said will address worker exploitation and abuse within the sector. Indian nationals have topped the Health and Care visa grants, with 38,866 given out last year, and now face hardships due to this delayed action against unscrupulous agencies. NCGO UK said it blames the British government for issuing thousands of licenses to care agencies without proper check to act as visa sponsors.
An NCGO UK statement reads: “Some of these agencies are bogus and operate from a hired desk at serviced offices. The majority of them were not checked for their genuineness by the Home Office and were issued with quotas like confetti.
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“The Home Office has started taking enforcement action against such bogus employers. The work permit holders can only switch to similar jobs as specified in the work permit. Some of the victims had borrowed thousands of pounds to get the visas. They would now be deported back as finding another sponsor within 60 days would be not only difficult but also impossible.”
The diaspora organisation whose founder-patron is ‘Gujarat Samachar’ Editor-in-Chief C.B. Patel, is supporting workers from Gujarat and also other parts of India. It is seeking a meeting with the Home Secretary and Shadow Home Secretary to discuss the future of an estimated 5,000 Indians said to be left hanging in balance.
It comes as an online petition on the Parliament website also makes an appeal on behalf of these workers who find themselves out of pocket and without jobs after being duped by fraudulent agencies.
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“People in the UK who lost their sponsorship are only permitted to stay 60 days, which is a very short notice for a family to arrange departure as it could unsettle their children's schooling, lead to loss of rent or deposit, furnishing costs, air ticket and relocation costs. The request is to extend jobless health workers' stay in the UK for one more year for them to secure another job,” reads the petition started by British Indian journalist Balakrishnan Balagopal.