The United Kingdom (UK) has banned immigrant care workers from coming along with dependents, News About Nigeria reports.
The move, according to the Chief Executive of Grosvenor Healthcare, Darren Stapelberg, has led to the decline of health workers in the country.
According to him, many UK home care providers have started losing workers due to the tightened immigration rules by the Home Office.
He further noted that, despite the care worker shortage of 152,000 across England, the immigration rules made the operation more challenging.
He also lamented that providers are now paying dozens of migrant workers to sit at home and do nothing because the Home Office has not renewed key immigration permits.
According to him, the new immigration law is due to accusations by most care workers, especially those from Africa, that they are now modern slaves.
Following their complaints, the UK government moved to stop new migrants and also stopped the care workers from bringing their dependents.
Stapelberg, while speaking on the new immigration law, noted that it has affected the great contribution that care workers offer.
He also added that it is not the right time to impose such a law as the workforce in the sector keeps declining daily.
“We are losing workers who have made a great contribution to this society, at a time when you could quadruple our workforce and still not have enough staff.
“It was very, very easy to sponsor people to come over, but the system has been abused, so now they are making it almost impossible to get new people in and staff who are already here can’t get renewals,” he added.
