Greek government promises housing for Moria's refugees

The Greek Minister of Migration, Notis Mitarakis, has promised that "the necessary actions" will be taken this Thursday to give the vulnerable groups who have become homeless after the fire in the Moria camp in Lesbos a place to sleep. "During the day, all necessary actions will be carried out for the immediate housing of the vulnerable and families, in specially designed spaces," the Ministry stated succinctly in a statement. In statements to the private radio station Skai, Mitarakis said that these people will sleep either on one of the three boats that are being prepared to take them in or in tents brought from other islands.

A spokesman of the Navy, however, pointed out to Efe that for the time being the military ships -two are from the Navy and one is a commercial ferry- are still in the port of Rafina, on the mainland, waiting for the order to set sail to Lesvos. The third, on the other hand, is already anchored in Sigri, in the northwest of Lesbos, waiting for the refugees to be transferred there from Moria, some 90 kilometres from that port. Experience shows that once the boats arrive the embarkation process is long.

Last March, the Greek government, in a bid to relieve the overcrowded camp, which at the time had some 20,000 inhabitants, loaded 400 people onto a navy ship which then transported them to other camps in the north of the country. The operation lasted for days. Thousands of people have spent the night in the open and so far have not even received food, according to the local media present in what remains of the Moria camp, which until yesterday housed nearly 13,000 people.

After the fire on Tuesday night, new fronts were unleashed yesterday afternoon which have razed almost everything that was left standing. The firemen continued this morning to fight against small outbreaks that are reactivated in the containers that made up the structured part of the camp. Mitarakis said the government has to face two fronts, that of the immigrants who "blackmail" the government with arson to force them out of the camp and that of the local government, which does not want a camp on the island.

The minister insisted that it is necessary to "have a closed and secure structure with rules" in Lesbos, something the government has been planning for a year, but is encountering strong resistance from local authorities. The governor of the North Aegean region, Konstantinos Mutzuris, said that the local population would be willing to accept a registration centre where refugees arriving in Lesvos would spend a night or two, but not a closed structure with thousands of people. "In Lesbos it is almost impossible to create another structure because the population has been suffering for so long and is afraid," Mutzuris told the Skai radio station. "The only feasible and realistic solution is to move these people to Europe," he stressed, adding that statements by several European leaders on their readiness to take in refugees have created a "favourable climate".

In the meantime, the transfer of the 400 unaccompanied minors - of the total 4000 in Lesbos - to Thessaloniki in the north of the country has been completed. The last plane with 75 children and adolescents arrived this morning at the city's Makedonia airport, where they were received by members of the National Public Health Agency (EODY) as well as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to coordinate the transfer to the hotels. The minors have undergone COVID-19 testing before leaving, but will now have to remain in quarantine for ten days for safety reasons.