UK visa change deals blow or many in Zimbabwe desperate to leave

By Bloomberg

Zimbabwean workers looking to migrate to the UK by obtaining care work are in a bind after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration announced plans to permanently scrap visas for that category of employees.

The UK government took the decision to permanently scrap the care visa due to the “abuse and exploitation” which has been taking place, it said in a post on its official X account on May 12.

Starmer has also been under pressure to reduce migration to the UK due to the growing popularity of right-wing, anti-migrant challenger parties such as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The permits offered Zimbabwean professionals an escape from the nation’s never-ending crises.

The southern African nation has one of the world’s most informal economies, according to the World Bank, and experiences frequent bouts of currency volatility and high inflation.

Last year, it scrapped the Zimbabwean dollar and replaced it with the ZiG, short for Zimbabwe Gold, after it crashed multiple times.

The bullion-backed currency, the nation’s sixth attempt at establishing a functioning unit since 2009, is also faltering. The central bank devalued it by 43% in September to close the gap between the official and parallel-market exchange rates.

India, Nigeria and Zimbabwe have been the three biggest sources of care workers migrating to the UK since it began offering them such visas.

UK Home Office figures show that 15 709 care-worker visas were issued to Zimbabweans and 19 449 to Nigerian nationals last year, including main applicants and their dependents.

A brain drain to the UK had resulted in Zimbabwe haemorrhaging not just talent in health care but also in sectors spanning banking, accounting and information technology services, according to Memory Nguwi, the managing consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants, a Harare-based human resources firm.

“Most of the people that were leaving their professions to join care work wanted temporary relief in terms of earnings,” Nguwi said by phone on Wednesday.

The new developments in the UK “won’t necessarily close the search for greener pastures” and the brain drain will continue, with there likely to be renewed interest in moving to Australia and New Zealand, he said.

Zimbabwean authorities have complained that the nurses and doctors leaving to work in the UK, created a huge gap in domestic health services.

Most of the nation’s hospitals are under-equipped and have no medicines. Power and water supply at the institutions are also erratic, and worker morale is low due to poor working conditions.

Earlier this month, a cabinet minister urged Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa to intervene on the dire state of the health sector.