"we were in dispute with the contractors [Kalyx] until September this year, when the matter was settled. We received £5,096,000 as a result, together with some guarantees about behaviour, but there is much to do" Baroness Scotland

It emerged on Wednesday that Kalyx who manage Harmondsworth IRC, which was wrecked in a riot last week, are to pay the Home Office £5,096,000 for 'contractual failures'.

NCADC contacted Kalyx and asked them to comment on the payout and the reasons why. Kalyx refused to give any information whatsoever and told NCADC that if we wanted information that we should contact the Home Office, the word 'corporate cowardice' springs to mind. NCADC did contact the Home Office; they said we do not release information on 'contractual matters'; the word 'government cowardice' springs to mind.

Questions NCADC asked both Kalyx and the Home Office:
Was the payout made after Anne Owers report on her inspection of Harmondsworth in July?

Will the Home Office withdraw the contract from Kalyx; such a high payout would indicate systemic failures by Kalyx to manage Harmondsworth.

What 'behaviour' needs guarantees that they should not happen again?

Have the Home Office/Kalyx not a 'Duty of Care' to release to all detainees that have been held in Harmondsworth; what the 'contractual failures' were as there could be information that the detainees could use to bring civil actions against Kalyx and the Home Office.

NCADC make two recommendations:

1) That with out fail, the Home Office distributes the £5,096,000,000 they have received from Kalyx amongst the detainees who have been in Harmondsworth.

2) That there is a public enquiry into the 'contractual failures'.

House of Lords debates - 6 Dec 2006: Column 1158
 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199697/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds06/text/61206-0002.htm#06120666000007

Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre - 'Not fit for Purpose'
 http://www.ncadc.org.uk/archives/filed%20newszines/newszine76/kalyxNovember2006.html

You may wish to ring/fax Kalyx with some questions:
Phone 020 7535 7400 - Fax: 020 7725 7211



Sergey Baranyuk forgotten at Harmondsworth

By Harmit Athwal for IRR 7th December 2006

A recent inquest into the death of Ukrainian asylum seeker Sergey Baranyuk provided a glimpse of how asylum seekers are treated behind the closed doors of removal centres in the UK - detained, forgotten and slowly driven to despair.

Harmondsworth/Kalyx Immigration Removal Centre
Sergey Baranyuk travelled from the Ukraine to the UK and claimed asylum. He died awaiting voluntary removal. He was found hanged in a shower room at Harmondsworth removal centre near Heathrow airport in July 2004. His death sparked a night of disturbances at the centre and all of the detainees were transferred out of the damaged centre. More recently, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, issued an inspection report that was 'undoubtedly the poorest report we have issued'. It described an 'over-emphasis on physical security - which was more appropriate to a high security prison than a removal centre' where 'over 60 per cent of detainees said they had felt unsafe'. The report was also critical of suicide prevention policies, finding that: 'Most worryingly, a so-called action plan, to deal with problems identified by the inquiry into the recent self-inflicted death, had been shared with neither the suicide prevention team nor the staff in the centre. It was a purely bureaucratic exercise which had had no impact on the centre's practices', such inadequacies prevailed two years after the death of Sergey Baranyuk.

Full story:
 http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/december/ha000010.html
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