21 November 2023: Some people from our signatory organisation RAPAR will be participating in this event on 1 December 2023.
DPAC: Profiting from Misery: Disability and Migrant justice campaigners protest at the companies profiting from depriving people of essential needs.
Profiting from Misery: Disability and Migrant justice campaigners protest at the companies profiting from depriving people of essential needs.
At 4pm on December 1st (two days before international day of disabled people) a coalition of disability and migrant justice organisations, including a group of disabled refugees will meet outside the Home Office to call for a stop to the obscene profits made by private corporations depriving people of human needs. Clearsprings and Serco are among the private corporations profiting from the government’s outsourcing of asylum accommodation to private corporations.
The Disability and Migration Network (DAMN https://disability-migration.org.uk/) will be delivering letters signed by over 300 people in protest about the dramatic rise in the profits of these companies. Last week, campaigners took a giant cheque, which featured the slogan, ‘Profiting from Misery‘ to the head office of Clearsprings in Essex.
Clearsprings made £62.5 million profit with its Home Office contracts to provide accommodation to people in London and the south of England. Clearsprings have been contracted by the Home Office to provide “safe, secure and warm [asylum] accommodation” until 2029. But Nanou Thassinda of Migrants Organise points out:
“Clearsprings has been profiting from our misery providing unsafe, undignified and inadequate accommodation for people seeking asylum for too long. The stark reality is: these places aren’t everyday homes or hotels, they are ‘detention hotels’ and open door prisons. It’s time the government returned the contract to local authorities to provide asylum accommodation on a not-for-profit basis. There is nothing more important than people living with freedom and dignity in their communities.”