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Charities campaign against withdrawal of free visas for Chernobyl children3

Governance | Kirsty Weakley | 8 Oct 2012

Two Chernobyl disaster children’s charities have launched an e-petition to try and stop the government from withdrawing free visas for children visiting the UK for recuperative care.

From March 2013 charities will have to pay £86 per child for a visa to visit the UK, increasing the cost of bringing a child to the UK by about 20 per cent.

One charity, Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline has estimated that the cost to its 23 members will total £212,500 based on 2,500 children visiting the UK.

Olywn Keogh, charity director at Friends of Chernobyl Children said the cost to its members would be about £45,000.

She added that this comes “on top of the introduction of biometric visas” five years ago which means the charity has to take the children to Minsk to sort it out and has been “costing us a fortune”.

Victor Mizzi who is founder chair of the Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline network and Linda Walker, executive director of the Chernobyl Children’s Project are calling on members of the public to sign a government e-petition, which if it gets 100,000 signatures will be eligible for debate in Parliament.

The Friends of Chernobyl’s Children network of charities is also supporting the campaign and directing people to the petition. At the time of going to press the petition had 6,120.

The petition states: “The future of vital recuperative holidays for children living with the after effects of the Chernobyl disaster is threatened because the FCO has announced that gratis visas for Chernobyl children will end in March 2013.”

An Foreign and Commmonwealth Office spokesperson said: "The government has supported the gratis visa project for the Chernobyl Children Charities for more than 16 years, helping thousands of children per year to travel to the UK for respite care. The many charities involved have done a fantastic job organising the trips over the years.

“In recent years we have had to make some very difficult spending decisions. Ministers decided in 2010 that the FCO-funded gratis visa scheme would unfortunately end on 31 March 2013.

“We informed the charities of our decision in November 2010. Our intention was to allow them plenty of time to seek alternative sources of funding. We have offered to work with them to do this.

“The charities will continue to have access to visas under a memorandum of understanding agreed with UK Border Agency. This ensures the proper safeguards are in place but also provides a facilitated service for the charities.”

Walker told civilsociety.co.uk that the reason the charities had not tackled this issue until now as that: “We have had such horrible problems with the UK Border Agency. It was refusing lots of children visas this summer.”

There are 67 charities that provide help to children affected by the Chernobyl disaster registered on the Charity Commission website.