Foreign nationals, including many Nigerians, who were recently recruited as officers in the United Kingdom Prison Service are reportedly seen camping in their cars to cut accommodation costs.

Per The Telegraph, worker recruitment from faraway shores was part of measures deployed to address the shortage of personnel to oversee the UK's overcrowded prisons.

The publication stated that the UK prison service is for the first time sponsoring skilled worker visas for overseas workers after a recent change in the rules enabled them to recruit from abroad.

According to the prison governors, many recruits came from Nigeria and included not only skilled workers but also those switching from other visa routes.

In response, the Prison Officers Association (POA) said overseas recruits have been showing up on their first with the erroneous impression that they would be given accommodation along with their job.

The president of the POA, Mark Fairhurst, reported that a foreign recruit was commuting the 70 miles from Huddersfield to Nottingham for work but later decided it was cheaper to camp out in his car outside the prison.

According to him, upon realising that the job package didn't include accommodation provision, a foreign recruit at another facility set up a camp in a wooded area opposite the prison.

“We have got problems with people who turn up at the gates with cases in tow and, with their families saying to the staff: ‘Where is the accommodation?” Fairhurst said.

The surge in recruitment came after visa rules changed last October, which paved the way for prison officers to be on the list of skilled workers eligible for sponsorship.

The Telegraph report quoted sources from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), who suggested that up to 250 foreign nationals have so far gained sponsorship to work in the Prison Service after passing through their Zoom interviews and vetting.

The publication added that prison governors noted that there are significantly more applications, which include those switching from other visa classes, claiming that in one month in 2023, two-thirds of the 3,500 would-be recruits were from Africa.

For his part, the president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), Tom Wheatley, said the surge in demand appeared to have been fuelled by word of mouth online.

“It’s turned into an approach that has been promoted online by the expat Nigerian community,” he said.

Wheatley revealed that the development created difficulties in some prisons where there were a disproportionate number of foreign prison staff and, in remote rural areas, issues over their integration into the local community.

He added that there had also been “issues about language and communication,” in some jails.