Care worker and eco-scientist face Home Office deportation

A leading renewable energy scientist and a care worker, who are married with three children, are facing deportation to Sri Lanka where the academic escaped torture.

Scientist Dr Nadarajah Muhunthan was awarded a Commonwealth Rutherford fellowship to work to develop thin-film photovoltaic devices used for solar energy generation, but he faces deportation along with his wife Sharmila Muhunthan who had been working at a care home.

Escape from torture

The couple came to England with their three children in 2018 to enable the scientist to develop renewable energy technology, as part of his fellowship.

The family are Tamil and a return trip to Sri Lanka to visit Dr Muhunthan’s ill mother in November 2019, led to his arrest and torture by the Sri Lankan government, the Guardian reports. The scientist succeeded in escaping and returned to the UK, where he claimed asylum.

A year later, Dr Muhunthan was given permission by the Home Office to work because his expertise was listed on the government’s Shortage Occupation List (SOL).

Care home's letter: 'We are in dire need'

However, after his scholarship expired in February 2020, Mr and Mrs Munhunthan were prevented from continuing work. The decision led the manager of Mrs Munhunthan’s care home to plead with the Home Office to allow their staff member to continue working for them.

The care home manager wrote: “We are in dire need of trained healthcare staff and we urge you to consider Mrs Sharmila Muhunthan’s right to work for us as a matter of urgency.”

Despite the care home’s intervention, the request was refused.

Care home providers and home care agencies have been urging the government to include all care workers on the Shortage Occupation List used to grant visas. They also want it to reduce the qualifying salary level from £25,600 - which is currently required for the recruitment of overseas care workers.

The SOL is a list of job roles in the UK that according to the British government is in short supply. Currently the list includes only care managers and senior care staff.

John Penrose, Conservative MP in Weston-super-Mare, where the family lived, wrote to Home Secretary Priti Patel on 1 October to tell her: “This looks like a wholly avoidable situation which has been caused by UK visas and immigration working too slowly.”

The family’s lawyer has launched a legal challenge against the Home Office.

Naga Kandiah of MTC solicitors told the Guardian: “There is growing concern over the state of human rights in Sri Lanka, with the UN high commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, noting that ‘surveillance, intimidation and judicial harassment of human rights defenders, journalists and families of the disappeared has not only continued, but has broadened to a wider spectrum of students, academics, medical professionals and religious leaders critical of government policies’.”

In the UK, waiting lists for care in England have risen to 300,000 (26 per cent) in three months, according to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services. There are over 100,000 job vacancies in social care at any one time.

Serious staffing shortages mean some care homes have stopped accepting admissions from hospitals, health and care leaders have warned. UK care homes are in "crisis" over staff shortages, Karolina Gerlich, the chief executive of the Care Workers’ Charity has said.

In a statement she made earlier this month, Karolina Gerlich said: “The social care sector is facing the biggest recruitment crisis in its history. A series of catastrophic decisions and policies have meant we continue to face an uphill battle to retain those we have in the sector, let alone recruit desperately needed workers into the workforce.

“The crisis continues to deepen. Providers have lost a huge pool of talent previously accessed from outside the UK.”

In response to the couple's case, a Home Office spokesperson said: “All asylum and human rights claims will be carefully considered on their individual merits in accordance with our international obligations.”