G4S is the biggest private UK company,
worth over £600 million for its various contracts.
Responsible for security services, managing detention centres,
prisons, and 675 court and police station holding cells, G4S have
also just been granted the £100 million contract for providing
10,000 security guards for the upcoming olympics.
Whilst G4S still seem to be government
favourites, their record is far from spotless. The firm lost their
previous 'deportation' contract last September after receiving 773
complaints of abuse – both verbal and physical. The final straw
came with the death of Jimmy Mubenga in October 2010, an Angolan
asylum seeker who died as a result of his forced deportation by G4S
guards. Two of the guards are on bail facing criminal charges, whilst
G4S is still waiting to hear whether they are to face corporate
manslaughter charges.
From as early as March 1st,
asylum seekers in Yorkshire and Humberside are being expected to
accept this multi-national, money-hungry, security company as their
landlords.
This £135
million contract for asylum seekers' social housing is set to be
shared across different security companies for different regions in
the UK. G4S, Serco and Reliance Security are set to be the main
benefactors of this mass privatisation; not their prospective
tenants. G4S' chief executive, Nick Buckles, gets an annual salary
and shares worth £2.4 million, plus a possible annual bonus
of £1.2 million. His pension pot alone is at present worth £7
million.
Fundamentally, the
government's proposed privatisation of social housing places the
safety, dignity and wellbeing of asylum seekers in danger. As the
coalition commits itself to deficit reduction and austerity, its zeal
for outsourcing to huge, profit-making, private companies must be
kept in check. It has already been proven that the initial
contracting of private companies to provide asylum seekers' social
housing produced a “housing system which in many instances was
poorly regulated, substandard and unsafe” (IRR). To grant a
new, multi-million pound contract which has already been criticised
to a company that has a practically non-existent record of providing
dignified and safe services is more than ludicrous; it is lethal.
Decisions made by
government officials and corporate executives, so far removed from
the precarious lives of the people on whom the changes would impact,
are set to further endanger those already at risk. This is something
we must all resist.