Dungavel detainees cost taxpayers £∏m

HUNDREDS of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being spent holding asylum-seekers at Dungavel detention centre for months at a time.

Scotland on Sunday has learned that almost £500,000 has been spent housing 13 long-term detainees, several of whom have been at the former prison in South Lanarkshire for more than a year.

Asylum-seekers are supposed to stay at so-called pre-departure centres for no more than a week. But in a number of cases, delays in the deportation system mean the UK Border Agency is holding people for an unspecified period.

For the duration of detention, the Home Office pays security firm G4S £110 a day for each asylum-seeker. At Dungavel, two men have been held for two years and four months, while others have been held for more than a year, at a cost to taxpayers of about £480,000.

Detaining Christian Likenge, 27, a former law student from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has been held for 28 months, has cost £100,000 to date. Likenge, a Christian preacher, is being held after the UK rejected his application for asylum but officials in his native country refused to give him the necessary identification to return home.

“It’s very difficult and frustrating being here this long,” he said. “It’s mental torture. I feel depressed. You miss your people, you miss your friends. You feel half-dead.”

Robina Qureshi, director of Positive Action in Housing, a Glasgow-based charity which offers support to asylum-seekers, said: “It would seem that his life has had no purpose other than to provide a profit for the past 28 months to the company running Dungavel under contract on UKBA. Are papers being deliberately lost? Who is it costing? The taxpayer.”

Qureshi said she knew of another case in which a woman was detained at Dungavel for 19 months, costing taxpayers £163,680.

Other examples of long-term detainees include Frank Mulami, from the DRC, who has been at Dungavel for 28 months; Heesam Hoseni from Iran, who has been there for 23 months; and Omeregie Obakpolo from Nigeria, who has been held for 17 months.

A UKBA spokesman said: “We only ever detain someone as a last resort and for no longer than is necessary. However, where they deliberately give false, misleading or incomplete information, they inevitably delay their return and extend their detention. They have to take responsibility for that.”