TWO Bournemouth councillors travelled to Portland to deliver welcome packs for refugees arriving at the Bibby Stockholm barge.

Green Party councillors Alasdair Keddie and Chris Rigby took a van of the packages to the port as the first refugees arrived yesterday, August 7.

The pair, who were not acting on official council business, received port clearance from the Home Office to take the van of packages onto the portside.

Cllr Keddie said the country can do ‘a lot better for asylum seekers and refugees than putting them on planes to Rwanda or putting them on a floating prison in the middle of the ocean’.

“We can open up safe routes, we can work through the backlog and we can depoliticise the whole culture war around asylum seeking,” he said.

“These are not illegal migrants. Asylum seeking refugees are following a legal process, no matter how difficult our government are making it.”

Bournemouth Echo: Workers at the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge at Portland Port in Dorset, which will house up to 500 people. The Home Office have said around 50 asylum seekers would board the Bibby Stockholm, with the numbers rising to its maximum capacity over the

Cllr Rigby said they had been speaking with the Stand Up to Racism organisation about the barge and asked if they could help.

“At the time, some of the refugees were going to be moved out of the hotels in Bournemouth and they had certain belongings with them like bicycles which we said we’d be able to bring for them which they wouldn’t be able to take themselves on the buses,” he said.

Cllr Keddie added: “This is an important thing, aside from their clothes this is the only belongings they have in the entire world. Its symbolic for them to be reunited with their things and actually own something in this country.”

The pair criticised the government over the barge.

“The absolute waste of money that has been spent on housing this, getting it, buying it," Cllr Rigby said.

"This money could have been spent on creating safe routes and a proper asylum process which people can use for applications to come into this country before they have to arrive via extremely dangerous routes and through criminal gangs.

“That could be completely removed if this money and funding was going in the right places as opposed to just trying to move the problem out of hotels and town centres and put it into Portland.

“What we need is safe routes into this country, legal ways to access this country, legal ways to seek asylum so we’re making sure that we’re helping the right people and we will support them.

“That’s the same as what we are doing today, just doing that little bit of support to the people who are arriving here.”

Cllr Keddie said: “We want to show that there is some human compassion for people who are fleeing persecution and trauma. If this small act that we can do takes a step towards that then we feel we are doing our duty as human beings.”