BULGARIA: Country struggles to accomodate growing number of refugees from Syria

Record ID: 274445

  • Title: BULGARIA: Country struggles to accomodate growing number of refugees from Syria
  • Date: 19th September 2013
  • Summary: ELHOVO, BULGARIA (SEPTEMBER 17, 2013) (REUTERS) BORDER POLICE POST SIGN READING (Bulgarian) "BORDER POLICE ELHOVO" VARIOUS OF MONUMENT OF BORDER GUARD SOLDIER WITH DOG AND GUN FROM COMMUNIST TIMES VARIOUS OF STONE SCULPTURE WITH SIGN READING (Bulgarian) "BORDER OF BULGARIA IS SACRED AND INVIOLABLE" VARIOUS OF REFUGEES PREPARING TO BE TAKEN BY BUS TO ANOTHER SITE CLOSE OF M
  • Embargoed: 4th October 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Bulgaria
  • Country: Bulgaria
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA9P6UGRHYLBLFLBNVZMX1DAJF0
  • Story Text: Bulgarian officials appealed this week for European Union (EU) aid in coping with a dramatic increase in refugees entering the country, as the conflict in Syria ripples displaced people across the continent.
    Those refugees who have already arrived in the EU's poorest country are met with overcrowded accommodation centres that the UN's refugee agency terms "unsafe and dire".
    One Syrian refugee waiting at a police post in Elhovo, near the Turkish border to be moved on to an accommodation centre, complained about the lack of proper beds or food supplies.
    "We need food and water and a space to sleep - we sleep on the floor here," said Mohamed, who did not give his last name. "And the food - we buy it from the supermarket. We go yesterday to the supermarket and we didn't find food," he added.
    A sharp increase in the number of refugees arriving in Bulgaria has put strain on the country's limited infrastructure.
    August saw the arrival of 50 refugees per day, compared to four per month in 2012. Those are numbers that Bulgaria's asylum system cannot keep pace with, says the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
    The UNHCR's representative in Bulgaria said up to 100 people shared a single bathroom in some of the centres run by Bulgaria's state agency for refugees, with scant educational and recreational activities.
    Most of the people seeking refuge are families escaping the civil war in Syria.
    Zobar, who was waiting alongside Mohamed in Elhovo, said he was in search of a good life, either in Bulgaria or elsewhere.
    "We ran away from a bad country and we needed to relax our minds from everything bad, you know. Because we suffered from a lot of things," he said.
    Bulgaria's interior minister appealed on Tuesday (Sept. 17) for assistance from EU countries to house the new arrivals.
    Speaking at a news conference, Tsvetlin Yovchev said the country was approaching a critical point in its ability to accommodate refugees.
    "We started to seek help from the European institutions more actively, as such help is badly needed for accommodation of these people, and secondly, we would ask for help for some of those people to be transferred to other European countries as part of European solidarity," he said.
    It is not yet clear whether that aid will come; Yovchev added that EU funds for refugees were scarce until the end of the year.
    Yovchev pledged to tackle the situation, working together with the Bulgarian Red Cross, principally to provide more beds for asylum seekers.
    Six years after joining the EU, Bulgaria remains the poorest country in the 28-member club.
    It has received about 2,000 Syrians since the start of Syria's conflict two and half years ago, according to UNHCR figures. Around 47,000 Syrians have sought asylum across the European Union during that period.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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