UK Border Agency whistleblower: Staff 'made asylum seekers act out shootings and sang offensive "Um Bongo" song'
By Daily Mail Reporter
03rd March 2010
The Border Agency has launched an internal review after a former employee revealed how a staff member sang the Um Bongo advertising jingle to a Congolese asylum seeker.
Former employee Louise Perrett told the Commons home affairs select committee yesterday that one colleague had asked several young African men to demonstrate ‘shooting’ to back up their claims they had been child soldiers.
Ms Perrett also alleged staff mocked each other when asylum applications were approved, and one employee sang an offensive Um Bongo song when she told him she was assessing an application from a Congolese woman.
Ms Perrett, who worked at the UK Border Agency’s (UKBA) Cardiff office for three-and-a-half months last summer, told the committee: ‘What I saw was absolutely horrific and should never be accepted or ignored.
‘I asked about the claimants and their [the staff member's] thoughts and was told “If it was up to me I would take them all outside and shoot them”.
‘I said she shouldn't be saying things like that in the office and it was horrendous... That was an indication of what was to come.’
UKBA chief executive Lin Homer has confirmed an inquiry into Ms Perrett’s claims is now under way.
Ms Perrett, who previously worked on policy development for the Welsh Assembly Government, told the committee she had been shocked by the tips she had been given on how to interview asylum seekers when she started at the Cardiff office.
She said: ‘He was giving me tips on how to conduct interviews.
‘One of his examples was that... when he had young men or children claiming to be former child soldiers, he would make them lie on the floor and demonstrate how they would shoot someone in the [African] bush.
Ms Perrett also claimed another employee had sung 'Um Bongo, Um Bongo, they kill them in the Congo' when she told him she was assessing an application from a Congolese woman.
Ms Perrett did not reveal whether the African woman was offended by the catchy song, which was used in a television advertisement in the 1980s. But she said it illustrated her claim that some Border Agency staff are 'racially prejudiced'.
She also said the office had formerly used a cuddly toy as a ‘grant monkey’, which was left on employees’ desks if they granted asylum.
She added that this practice had now ended.
However, Ms Perrett said she had been impressed by the behaviour of a select few employees in the office.
She said: ‘There are good people there. Don't get me wrong. There are good people who work in a professional, courteous manner.
‘But the younger members of staff were more gung ho and rude from the moment they met an asylum seeker in the interview room.
They showed a ‘general hostility, not so much in things they would say but in their demeanour and their abruptness and general intimidation that I thought, as a good official, was totally unnecessary’, she said.
Following Ms Perrett’s claims, UKBA representative Ms Homer told the committee: ‘I take very seriously any allegation that any of our leaders in any part of our organisation would be disruptive or racially prejudiced.’
'We took the position that we should investigate and this investigation is under way’, she added.
‘If it generates any [evidence]... we would see that as a very serious priority for the agency.’
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