C. Curly: “To finally have the country of our national immigration policy, and not just play it by ear”

The need for integrated national planning with the participation of all tiers of the state administration for the management of the refugee problem, the promotion of legislation where this is required, put forward at today’s meeting in the Region of Attica, Giannis Sgouros.
Mr Sgouros underlined that the government failed in the management of the problem, because the approach from the beginning was patchy, and he recalled that from 2009 on the Athens Prefecture had asked the public to draw national policy on the issue of immigration, putting forward concrete proposals, but all the parties have faced the problem occasionally.
He stressed that at the moment we need to ensure the minimum even living conditions of thousands of refugees and immigrants arriving in Attica, who survive thanks to the touching efforts of mainly voluntary organisations and ordinary citizens that tend a helping hand.
He criticized the administration of Attica Region for lack of preparation, since, as he said, “today’s meeting was there is no data available for the refugees in the Attic and without the presence of representatives of the competent Ministries”.
In order to address adequately the problem mr Curly raised a number of obvious questions, such as how many people are right today the refugees in Attica, where they live, how many are expected to come in the next few days from the islands, how many of them are economic migrants and what is the Government plan for the management of economic migrants, all those who de facto is not going to be allowed to cross the border.
Called for there to be equal distribution of refugees, both in Greece and ενδοπεριφερειακά in Attica in order to avoid phenomena of ghettoisation and xenophobia, but also to have these people access to humane living conditions.
While he stressed that the government should have some say in the selection of centres for the installation of refugees, and do not learn a posteriori.
It ended up that there will be daily coordination of Government and self-Government a’ and b’ grade on this issue, in order to prevent dangerous and uncontrollable situations in the future, and suggested the Region to help economically from the reserve to de-escalate the crisis. The funds could be reimbursed retrospectively by the Ministry of the Interior.