£1m council house for Afghan family
AN AFGHAN family living in a £1.2million taxpayer-funded mansion provoked a storm yesterday by comparing their benefits windfall to winning the lottery.
Mum Toorpakai Saiedi, 35, and her seven children rake in handouts worth £170,000-a-year – including more than £12,000 a month for rent.
Taxpayer groups reacted with fury at the hand-outs.
Mrs Saiedi’s student son Jawad, 20, told how the refugee family couldn’t believe their luck when they were offered the seven-bedroom luxury home.
It boasts two kitchens, a dining room, two large reception rooms and a 100ft garden and is set in a leafy, upmarket street in Ealing, west London.
“If someone paid you the lottery jackpot, would you leave it?” he said outside the mansion, where Mercedes and BMW luxury cars line the road and council tax tops £2,000 a year.
“We do like living here. But my mum said she is not happy because the house is so big and she doesn’t like cleaning.” Mrs Saiedi said: “I don’t work because I’m busy looking after my children.” The family, from Bagram, 30 miles from Kabul, fled their war-torn homeland to escape the Taliban seven years ago.
Jawad said: “We are very lucky to live here. We wanted to live in some smaller houses but there were problems and we were given this choice. “Ealing council told us to have a look at three houses and we chose this one.”
The family – the father is estranged – made up of Mrs Saiedi and her four sons and three daughters, aged from eight to 22, moved in only three months ago because their contract ran out on a previous home nearby.
Ealing council was legally obliged to find a seven-bedroom house and turned to private properties because there were no suitable council houses available.
Under a bizarre new system, the council had to agree to pay local landlord Ajit Panesar an astonishing £12,458 a month, partly because under recent boundary changes, Acton is lumped in with mega-rich Westminster.
Jawad said: “When I heard how much the council were paying I thought they were mad.”
The landlord had completed £90,000 of refurbishments in the weeks before they moved in.
Ealing council housing chief Councillor Will Brooks blamed the Government’s housing rules for allowing private landlords to charge exorbitant rents.
Mark Wallace, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “The system has gone seriously wrong when one family is costing taxpayers so much. The people running the welfare system seem to have forgotten that money doesn’t grow on trees. This family could be helped without the need for such a huge bill.”
