ZIMBABWEAN refugees living in south Essex face long weekly journeys to register at reporting centres as far away as Edinburgh.

Many people who have fled the troubled African country are waiting to hear if they can stay in the UK and have to register their presence here each week.

One woman in her fifties living in Southend has an 800-mile round trip to Edinburgh every week.

Stanford Biti, the chairman of the Southend Branch of the Movement for Democratic Change, the Zimbabwean opposition party to Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party, said: “Many of our people have to go to Birmingham to register and another has to register in Manchester.

“The lady who goes to Edinburgh travels overnight on a National Express coach to keep the costs down.

“So often they are made to feel as though they are committing an offence just by asking to change to another reporting centre closer to where they live.” He said he had asked the Home Office to change the registrations from weekly to monthly”

Reporting centres are usually immigration offices or police stations.

Tawanda Chiwara, another member of the Southend branch of the MDC, said: “I’ve heard of somebody who has to travel from Bedford to Dartford and another person who has to travel from the south coast to Liverpool.”

Home Office spokesman Andrew Bell suggested it was unusual for asylum seekers to have to travel so far to register.

He said: “When an individual has to attend a reporting centre, we will generally arrange for this to take place at the centre nearest to where they live.

“Individual circumstances of applicants are taken into account on a case by case basis.”

l Rochford and Southend East MP James Duddridge has brought up the situation in Zimbabwe in Parliament. Speaking in the Commons, the Conservative MP said: “I’ve had harrowing discussions with Zimbabweans about the situation.

“I have heard descriptions of innumerable atrocities involving people having their limbs lopped off and being thrown alive into a fire.

“It is reminiscent of the discussions I had with people who survived the atrocities in Rwanda. Following the so-called election, we hope that the violence will decrease. But it is possible it will increase.”