A SCOTTISH charity has voiced “immense anger” over the UK Government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, amidst fears it is endangering women and children.

Positive Action in Housing had been working with 583 Ukrainian refugees through the scheme by Thursday– a number which is growing by around 20 people a day – and none of them have made it to the UK.

Of the hundreds of people they are supporting, only one person was granted a visa but she has decided to not travel until her family is also given visas ensuring their safety.

 The charity’s CEO Robina Qureshi compared their current efforts to “triaging” as they strive to get people through “a very bad process and bad government policy”.

The scheme requires UK individuals to nominate named Ukrainians to host to allow them to carry out an application for visas.

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This has led to many Ukrainians turning to social media to find a sponsor with children as young as 14 offering their details up on Facebook, Ms Qureshi warned.

Speaking of her concerns about people sharing their personal details on social media, she said: “It‘s young girls saying I found someone on Facebook, 15-year-old boys, 17-year-old medical students.”

“These are all prime candidates for human trafficking. That means sex trafficking, trafficking for labour and trafficking for organ harvesting.”

The UK Government has assured that all households receiving refugees will be checked by local authorities before the arrival of any Ukrainians granted visas. This is in addition to Home Office checks of sponsors before visas are issued to refugees.

However, Positive Action in Housing fears trafficking with the help of social media could occur before the refugees make it to the UK.

Ms Qureshi said: “Michael Gove is singularly responsible for driving women, children and young people to commodify themselves on Facebook so that somebody might take them in as a sponsor.

“Meanwhile, the sponsors are intermingling with human traffickers who are getting personal data harvesting it and deciding who’s going to do what.”

She added that traffickers could use data shared publicly in Facebook groups to intercept travelling refugees and “get there first” before any verified sponsors.

One Facebook group set up to help Ukrainians find sponsors has more than 50,000 members with the charity leader fearing that it is created a “bartering” system based on the looks of refugees.

“There's beautiful women, children, young people,” she said, “it seems that somebody posts a nice picture of themselves and then someone else posts a nicer picture of themselves, and a third posts some more attractive picture, or a more sexual picture.

“It's all this bartering based on images, rather than whether somebody is in need.

“Now, would we do this to foster children and say, ‘go and find your new mommy and daddy on social media’? We wouldn't.

“Why is it alright to do that to war refugees, or to the children of Ukrainians.”

She added: “This deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms.”

The Government had officially launched a matching scheme with the help of charity Reset Communities and Refugees on Friday, April 1.

It is the first service to pair sponsors and refugees who had not been able to find a named individual to host them and help start the visa process.

Ms Qureshi said non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with experience working with refugees should have been involved from the start.

She said: “[The UK Government] needs to let organisations like Room for Refugees and other hosting networks and other NGOs do their work.

“We cannot assist people out of a warzone because then you are scrambling between emails, messages and people saying ‘I found something on Facebook, I don’t need you anymore’.

“This is completely beset with hazard and danger.”

A spokesperson for the UK Government said the scheme has been designed to include “safeguards” and checks on chosen sponsors.

“Exploitation through “sex for rent” or human trafficking is illegal and has no place in our society – those with evidence of law breaking should go to the police,” the spokesperson said.

“We have designed our Homes for Ukraine scheme specifically to have safeguards in place – including robust security and background checks on all sponsors, both by the Home Office and local authorities.

“Registering your expression of interest in becoming a sponsor does not mean an individual has passed security checks, and all sponsors must go through these checks.

“For the safety of the applicant, no visa will be issued until these Home Office checks have been completed.”