Greece to build new camps for asylum seekers

ATHENS: Greece, on the front line of migration into Europe, promised on Wednesday to build new reception centres for asylum seekers and cut the maximum stay in camps on its now-overcrowded islands.

Authorities will have finished the construction of beter-equipped camps on the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos by the autumn of 2021, Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said. None of the asylum seekers would be on an island for more than six months.

“In 12 months from today we should not have any of the legacy reception system we are seeing today,” Mitarachi told a news conference called to present the country’s migration strategy over the next two years. Authorities were restructuring the asylum service to introduce remote and digital applications in order to faster process a backlog of about 87,000 asylum requests, he said.

Meanwhile, Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarachi said on Wednesday that Greece is abolishing the practice of holding asylum-seeker children and teenagers who arrive in the country without parents or guardians in protective police custody.

The practice, which saw newly arrived unaccompanied minors held in police stations across the country sometimes for months at a time and oten along with unrelated adults, has been widely condemned by rights groups. It has also led to judgments against Greece by the European Court of Human Rights.

Mitarachi said that as of Nov. 14, no unaccompanied asylum-seeker teenagers and children remained in police custody.

“We will move with legislative changes to stop the scheme of unaccompanied minors being kept in police custody, a system that started in 2001,” he said.

According to the ministry, efforts began at the start of the year to move children being held in police stations to more appropriate accommodation.

It said 331 unaccompanied minors were in protective police custody at the end of March, and that number had been reduced to zero by Nov. 14, with the children moved to long-term or temporary shelters.

The ministry said that between mid-february to August, 960 of them were transferred from the islands to shelters or transferred to other European Union countries or reunited with relatives.

Another 733 unaccompanied minors were transferred from island camps to mainland shelters or hotels during September and October, it said.

Mitarachi said his ministry, along with the Citizens’ Protection Ministry, would soon be submiting a bill in parliament “to formally end this practice” of children being held in police custody.