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Meet 'our man in Rochdale'

1/10/2002

A LOCAL community worker would like to assure Jack Straw he has no designs on his job.

In fact Mohammed Yousaf could do without the hundreds of e-mails he's received that should have gone to the Foreign Office. The chairman of Rochdale's Complaints Authority organisation was forced to play amateur High Commissioner when e-mail pleas to Mr Straw's government department began arriving from five continents. He has alerted the men in Whitehall of the apparent mix up but they have done nothing to correct matters.

Said Mr Yousaf: "I have received e-mails from people all over the world including Canada, Thailand, Italy, France and Belguim. I've e-mailed many people back telling them about the mix up. Some of these messages are very important in that many people are chasing up their visa applications, others are wanting to know whether their applications have been received, many want general information."

The Complaints Authority's website does have its own visa section where people can write in to complain about visa problems. The address is www.visasection@complaintsauhority.org. - is quite different from the Foreign Office email addresses. One person from Thailand sent their message to visa.bangkok@fco.gov.uk.visasection but the email went to Complaints authority instead.

This e-mail read: "I would like to know if I got married in Thailand to Kamfon in September, what forms I would need to fill in for her visa application. Would she get her visa to come to England with me? Would she get the visa with no problems - I love her very much and miss her."

Mr Yousaf rang the Foreign Office and told an official about the apparent mix up but nobody got back to him.

"There's a lot of people out there who are waiting for replies but are not getting them. There may be important cases that need dealing with urgently but if the Foreign Office doesn't do anything about it then these cases will just be brushed under the carpet. I've tried e-mailing back as many as I can but how long can I keep on doing this?

"If they had fallen in to the wrong hands anybody could have taken advantage of the situation and sent back replies saying that all visas have been refused or they haven't. There's obviously something wrong in the system and it is up to the Foreign Office to do something about it, not me."