Staff reporter
The visa fees for the United Kingdom (UK)are set to go up significantly for applicants from around the world, including thousands of Zimbabweans with the prospect of going abroad to eke a living.
The Announcement of a visa fee hike by the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this Thursday, comes at a time when most Zimbabweans at home are preparing to go abroad either via the popular “Nurse Aide” training loophole or by other means.
Speaking to reporters at a Downing Street press conference, Prime Minister Sunak said, that the fees and health surcharge paid towards the UK’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS) by visa applicants are set to rise to meet the country’s public sector wage increase.
“If we’re going to prioritise paying public sector workers more, that money has to come from somewhere else because I’m not prepared to put up people’s taxes and I don’t think it would be responsible or right to borrow more because that would just make inflation worse,” said Sunak
“So, what we have done are two things to find this money. The first is, we are going to increase the charges that we have for migrants who are coming to this country when they apply for visas and indeed something called the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), which is the levy that they pay to access the NHS,” he said.
“All of those fees are going to go up and that will raise over GBP 1 billion, so across the board visa application fees are going to go up significantly and similarly for the IHS,” he added
The move if implemented with haste, most Zimbabweans who have the prospect
to go abroad will have to work extra hard to raise Visa fees and those Zimbabweans already in the UK diaspora will have to folk out more.