A Glasgow councillor is fighting to get free bus travel for asylum seekers after the Scottish Government backtracked on proposals to offer the benefit.

Scottish Greens councillor Anthony Carroll is lodging a motion at a council meeting this week calling for the local authority to write to the Scottish Government “to ask that the decision to not expand this (free bus) provision nationally be reversed.”

He points out how asylum seekers can’t afford a £5.60 bus fare when those living in hotels get £8.68 weekly and people staying in non catered accommodation receive £49.18. There are about 4,500 asylum seekers in the city according to latest figures.

READ NEXT: Winter fuel payment: how the Glasgow Labour MPs voted

Councillor Carroll said: “Asylum seekers in Glasgow are the most isolated folk in the city.

“How can they get to the Home Office or other appointments when they can barely afford the daily essentials.”

He added: “It is really disappointing to see the SNP ditch the plan for free bus travel. The issue of isolation is strongly felt. The effect it will have will be massive – it is life changing.”

Holyrood had previously announced it would hold a pilot of the travel scheme for asylum seekers who can’t work under immigration rules. But now that proposal has been scrapped due to budget pressures, it is understood.

READ NEXT:Hundreds dying from alcohol and drugs in Glasgow each year

Carroll’s motion said: ”Council recognises the findings in The Mental Health of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the UK report by Mental Health UK, that ‘getting out of the house improved their well being, but that affording public transport services was difficult’, with 84 per cent of asylum seekers and refugees they surveyed saying that they had ‘experienced being unable to use public transport because of the cost” in Scotland.'”

On Thursday the motion will ask SNP councillor Angus Millar, responsible for transport, to write to the Scottish Government cabinet secretary for transport to “state council’s support for the free bus travel scheme for Asylum Seekers to ask that the decision to not expand this provision nationally be reversed.”

Among other measures, it also calls on council leader Susan Aitken to write to the UK Government for a UK wide concessionary bus card scheme for asylum seekers.