Government Sets up Center to Coordinate Refugee Management
Greece completed the creation of a coordinating center whose function will be to better coordinate ministerial efforts to tackle the refugee crisis, the Defence ministry announced in a press conference on Thursday.
The center, headed by Alternate Defence Minister Dimitris Vitsas, will be comprised by representatives from the six ministries involved in managing the issue – Defence, Migration Policy, Civil Protection, Infrastructure-Transport and Networks, Shipping and Macedonia-Thrace.
Speaking to journalists, Vitsas said Greece is completing its obliations towards Europe and is now focusing on the creation of temporary housing centers, in cooperation with local government. He also said the decisions of the EU-Turkey summit on March 7 will be a landmark for the center. “Based on the summit’s decisions, we’ll readapt our entire policy.”
He added that the government wants to create another 15,000 positions of temporary accommodation by next week in areas where they can be “set up quickly”, noting that the majority of the venues used today for accommodation are unused military camps.
ANA-MPA