Fire safety fears delay refugees moving onto Bibby Stockholm barge
Activists and human rights campaigners have previously slammed the Home Office plans out of concern for conditions aboard.
The government has delayed moving asylum seekers onto an oil-rig accommodation vessel amid concerns over health and safety aboard.
It was initially planned to move some 500 asylum seekers onto the Bibby Stockholm, currently moored at Portland, Dorset, on Tuesday.
These have since been pushed back to Wednesday to allow officials to survey the vessel, the Guardian reports.
The Home Office announced the move, alongside an initiative to begin housing asylum seekers in repurposed military sites, earlier this year as part of an effort to curb the £6-million-per-day cost of putting migrants up in hotels.
Resorting to hotel accommodation has itself been widely panned as a direct consequence of a massive backlog in asylum claims, with the official waiting time of just a few weeks in reality stretching on for several years in many cases.
More than 50 human rights and refugee aid organisations have decried the new initiatives as ‘cruel and inhumane,’ adding that ‘detention-like conditions’ aboard the vessel were ‘entirely inappropriate’ for safeguarding migrant welfare.
Local campaigners have also taken aim at the plans.
An open letter, signed by more than 90 groups and 700 individuals earlier in June, stated: ‘For many people seeking asylum arriving in the UK, the sea represents a site of significant trauma as they have been forced to cross it on one or more occasions.’
It went on: ‘Housing people on a sea barge – which we argue is equal to a floating prison – is morally indefensible, and threatens to re-traumatise a group of already vulnerable people.’
The exact level of government expenditure on the new initiative presently remains unknown, though press reports have suggested the price tag may stand at more than £20,000 per day for charter and berthing alone.
Rishi Sunak’s press secretary said on Monday: ‘The Bibby Stockholm is currently undergoing final preparations including fire safety checks. That’s happening this week to ensure that it complies with all the appropriate regulations.’
‘There’s been refurbishment that’s been ongoing to ensure it complies with the marine industry safety regulations.
‘As you’d expect, we continue to work extremely closely with the local council… to ensure the right preparations are in place before anyone boards.’
The boat’s capacity originally stood at just 212 cabins, which have reportedly been refitted to accommodate some 500 single male refugees.
Historically used to house oil rig workers in the North Sea, the Bibby Stockholm has also previously been used as an accommodation vessel for asylum seekers by both the German and Dutch governments.
The latter’s use of the barge proved a particular cause of controversy.
According to Corporate Watch, a UK corporate investigative research project, a number of cases of abuse occurred during the vessel’s years of operation in the Netherlands, including beatings and sexual exploitation.
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