By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
A PREGNANT woman was left to sleep on a bare floor in Greater Dandenong due to the federal government’s ‘no advantage’ rule for asylum seekers.
Kon Karapanagiotidis, chief executive of the Melbourne-based Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, blames the federal government for a looming “humanitarian crisis” in Dandenong. He said it had failed to properly house, clothe and feed asylum seekers.
Figures show that as of June last year, 318 of the state’s 818 asylum seekers on bridging visas were believed to be living in Greater Dandenong.
Mr Karapanagiotidis estimates on top of that, up to 60 per cent of Melbourne’s new asylum seekers are heading to the Dandenong region, leading to “massive waiting lists” for support services.
Under the no advantage rule, asylum seekers are banned from working for up to five years and given minimal assistance, if they came to Australia’s shores by boats after August 12 last year.
The Journal was told of an Iranian woman, 20 weeks pregnant, who was ‘settled’ into an unfurnished house in Greater Dandenong. Without a bed or blankets, she was left to sleep on the floor.
Springvale Community Aid and Advice Bureau (SCAAB) — which like other charities has been stretched to the limit by requests for help — supplied her a mattress.
Mr Karapanagiotidis said new arrivals were forced into destitution and homelessness. He said their meagre incomes did not cover rent, food and school expenses.
“You are having a group of resilient, thoughtful people willing to do a hard day’s work forced onto welfare and not able to work for up to five years,” he said.
“People are falling apart because of this. They don’t want to be a charity case, they just want to support their families.”
He said the lack of resources to help them was designed to “break the charities and in turn break the people”.
After pleas for help from welfare agencies, the ASRC is planning to open an asylum seekers employment service in Dandenong in June. It will teach basic English, and workplace and job-seeking skills. At the Melbourne-based centre, 90 asylum seekers were placed into work, adding $1 million to the economy.
Daniel Spitteler, of the Dandenong-based Asylum Seekers Centre, has only just started re-registering asylum seekers for material aid, such as food and crockery. For several months, he was crushed by demand and had to refuse up to 50 new arrivals a day.
Catherine Franklin, of SCAAB, says an informal support network is being built among asylum seekers so “at least we know when new people arrive and where they are living”.
“It really should be the government’s responsibility to provide for them. The ‘no advantage’ rule seems cruel to me.”
A government spokeswoman did not respond by deadline.
What do you think? Post a comment below.
For all the latest breaking news, stay with this website. Also, follow the Weekly at facebook.com/dandenongjournal or on Twitter @DandyJournal.
