Visit to Southport
The MWI carried out a visit to Southport on Wednesday 9th December. We were accompanied by a number of volunteers from Blackburn, males and females. We were also joined by Suhayl Patel of the Beacon Counselling Trust of Liverpool and Nadiyah Speers Robinson of Southport against Racism.
Over 100 asylum seekers from many different countries have been housed at the Scarisbrick Hotel in Southport. This was our second visit. A number of families have been housed in different towns and cities. However. More and more asylum seekers are arriving into the hotel.
With the financial assistance of organisations like Wifaqul Ulama UK of London and Peace and Relief International of Leicester, we have been providing 100 food vouchers to the value of £5 to each person twice weekly. Weekly budget is £1000.
Wifaqul Ulama UK very kindly donated £6000 towards this programme and Peace and Relief International have very generously donated £10,000. Our assistance will be coming to an end on 31st January 2021.
It was very sad to hear of all the difficulties the refugees are facing. Food has been of a very low standard since day 1 and the Halal certificates provided do not mention the Halal criteria being certified. Suffice to say that all Halal labelled food can at best be described as doubtful.
A number of organisations are now involved trying to sort out the issues.