Socialities
Resettlement snags custos
The Uganda Resettlement Board reports to Parliament this week and rumour has it that they are in a self-congratulatory mood. They will have few grounds for continuing to be so when they read the dossier compiled by various voluntary organisations on how some of the new arrivals have been treated by the Supplementary Benefits Commission. For example Mrs Elizabeth Bray, who is a Community Rela tions Officer in South London, reports on a Ugandan Asian couple with six children who had only Ezi a week to live on once they had paid the rent of their furnished flat. Another of her cases concerns an old Ugandan Asian who for months had neither bed nor bedclothes and had been refused a grant by the SBC to buy them. Similar cases have been col lected from Birmingham, Coventry and Sheffield and it would appear that the Commission has sent out a directive on just how tough local officers can be with the new immigrants.
Under the 1966 Ministry of Social Security Act the SBC has the power to bring a person's income up to the 'poverty line' provided that person is not in full-time work. However it must not pay the full benefit if by doing so it makes him better off out of work than when following his normal occupation. This is known as the wage stop 'ruling.
But what is a 'normal occupation' for a Ugandan Asian? It would appear, for example, that a shopowner in Uganda is equivalent to a shop assistant in this country — at least to the SBC. As a result, a large number of refugees are being ' waged stopped' along with 22,000 more established families.
None of the voluntary bodies is claiming that the SBC is behaving in a racist way to the immigrants. As one voluntary worker puts it the immigrants are like the barium meal in an x-ray: as they pass through the supplementary benefits system, it is possible to see more clearly just what kind of safety net we do have.
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