THE NEW YORK TIMES: Britain gave Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds, even though no asylum seekers were deported to the Central African nation under the agreement.
Rwanda does not have to repay the hundreds of millions of pounds it received from Britain as part of a contentious policy aimed at sending migrants on a one-way flight to the Central African nation, two senior Rwandan government officials have said.
As part of the deal, Britain was set to give Rwanda as much as about half a billion pounds in development funding in exchange for taking in the migrants. Britain’s independent public spending watchdog said in early March that the country had already paid Rwanda £220 million, about $280 million, even though no asylum seekers had been deported to the African nation.
Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, scrapped the plan after taking over as the country’s leader last week. The initiative had been devised by Britain’s previous government under the Conservative Party in an effort to deter unauthorized migrants from crossing the English Channel to Britain in unsafe boats.
One of the Rwandan officials, Alain Mukuralinda, the government’s deputy spokesman, said on Wednesday that the agreement did not include a reimbursement clause. » | Abdi Latif Dahir, Reporting from Kigali, Rwanda | Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Rishi Sunak certainly understood how to waste taxpayers’ money on unworkable vanity schemes, didn’t he? Add the cost of this failed experiment with the money he squandered during the pandemic as Chancellor and the Treasury would be a great deal better off today than it now is. Rishi understood very well how to make himself rich, but making the country rich not so much! Making Sunak our unelected prime minister has turned out to be a very expensive mistake. The country is on its uppers as a result of this failed experiment (and other bad economic decisions), and the Conservative Party is facing extinction. – © Mark Alexander
