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Some 1,000 individuals are dwelling in deplorable circumstances in an EU-funded migrant camp on the outskirts of Athens in Greece.
Also generally known as “new Malakasa”, building of the state-run centre began 9 months in the past and is backed by some €4.7m in EU funding.
It has no working water, with most people living in tents not designed for winter conditions. Power cuts are frequent.
The first reported refugee demise in Greece from Covid-19 was a Malakasa-camp resident.
A recent report by Refugee Support Aegean, an NGO, stated residents included asylum seekers from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Syria.
Minos Mouzourakis, a authorized officer on the NGO, stated not one of the 283 kids who lived in Malakasa attended faculty.
“Due to the lack of Wi-Fi access in the facility, children are also unable to follow the current conduct of classes via videoconference,” he stated, in an electronic mail.
The NGO collected testimonies of a number of the residents.
They described circumstances paying homage to Moria, a big, ghetto-like camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, which burned to the bottom in September.
“There is violence, there is sexual harassment of women … I am scared even to go alone to the toilet after dark,” stated one Malakasa resident.
Another one informed the NGO her household warmed themselves and cooked on a makeshift open hearth.
“We have no light. I covered my baby in a jacket and I cannot take it off due to the cold,” she stated.
The camp is co-financed by the EU, underneath its Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (Amif).
For its half, the European Commission stated it had signed a grant settlement for the camp with the Greek ministry of migration and asylum on 23 November.
“Construction of the camp began in March 2020, following tensions at the Greek-Turkish border. This pre-dates the commission’s award, the emergency funding for this project was granted retroactively,” an EU fee spokesperson stated in an electronic mail on 18 December.
Malakasa nonetheless wanted to be related to the nationwide electrical energy community and containers would finally exchange the tents, the spokesman stated, however gave no dates.
The fee was monitoring the scenario within the camp “with the aim to improve reception conditions and ensure proper temporary shelter for winter”, the fee added.
This included establishing massive tent-like buildings to offer some shelter from chilly.
“Release of second pre-financing for this facility is conditional upon the installation of all containers in the camp,” the EU spokesman stated.
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