NI charity volunteers who work with Ugandan street children spend £2,500 to bypass Aer Lingus dispute

Ten NI volunteers from Dwelling Places UK were due to fly to Uganda via Dublin on Saturday.

But the flight to Heathrow that would connect them to their Africa flight has been cancelled because of the Aer Lingus pilots dispute.

They have had to spend £2,500 making alternative arrangements to get to Heathrow – money they say would have been spent on the children.

Val McCluskey, who lives in Dromore, Co Down, is chairperson for the charity Dwelling Places UK, which supports street children in the African country.

Aer Lingus has told travellers that it will refund the cost of all cancelled flights during the industrial action or arrange alternative flights.

However, Val said that Aer Lingus is denying responsibility for the costs, saying the overall trip, including the flights from Dublin to Heathrow, was booked with Kenya Airways.

She says Kenya Airways, in turn, responded that Aer Lingus is liable, because it cancelled the flight from Dublin to Heathrow.

Aer Lingus has already cancelled 270 flights over the coming days due to industrial action by pilots over pay.

Dwelling Places UK currently supports almost 400 homeless or at risk children in Uganda. It cares for 43 for them in an orphanage with the rest being supported through education.

“The strapline for the charity is education not streets,” Val told the News Letter.

“The main problem for the children in Uganda is human trafficking.

“There is a big problem with children migrating from high-risk situations at home in the very north of Uganda. They think they're coming to Kampala for a better life. And then they end up either being trafficked or being abused on the streets. And they are stuck in that cycle, being exploited sexually or for street begging or crime.”

One of the biggest overheads for the charity is school fees, to teach the children trades and professions and lift them out of criminal exploitation into gainful employment.

The 10 Co Down volunteers due to travel out on Saturday were planning to do maintenance work to the charity's orphanage and work with the girls living there.

They had already raised £9,000 for the charity, some of which had already been sent ahead for building materials.

“Last Saturday we got a notification from the travel agent to say that the first leg of our journey had been cancelled,” Val said.

Aer Lingus was due to fly them from Dublin to Heathrow. Kenya Airways was then to fly them onwards to Nairobi and Entebbe.

However, neither airline said they could offer alternative flights to reach Heathrow.

“So we had to book flights at our own expense from Belfast to Luton and book a hotel.

“The cost of £2,500 has had to come out of our fundraising. There is no other way around it. Most of this £2,500 money would have gone to food for the children or their school fees and equipment.

“Our team is just gutted that a lot of the money that they worked so hard to raise has disappeared. We're hopeful that we can recoup some of it but we just don’t know if it will be possible.”

She hopes their return flights on July 10 will not be disrupted.

Aer Lingus and Kenya Airways have been invited to comment.