Syrian refugee family to arrive in Malta tomorrow

A family of six Syrian refugees will arrive in Malta tomorrow.

MaltaToday is informed that the family will initially be housed at the Hal Far reception centre before being sent to the Church-run Good Shepherd home for refugees in Balzan. 

The arrival of the family will mean that 32 refugees would have been relocated to Malta since EU countries last year agreed to relocate 160,000 people from Italy and Greece by 2017 – Malta is accepting 131 asylum seekers under the agreement.

However, the Financial Times has revealed that the deal has been challenged by asylum seekers who are refusing to be relocated to poorer EU member states, such as Bulgaria and Romania. Indeed, Greek officials say that 191 of the 1,324 people processed for relocation have dropped out or disappeared.

Bulgaria last week agreed to accept 47 asylum seekers from Greece. However, when they were informed of their destination, 36 dropped out of the scheme and seven absconded from the country, leaving only four people to be relocated to Bulgaria.

Similarly, 32 of the 67 asylum seekers destined to be relocated from Greece to Romania dropped out or disappeared, while eight of the 27 people set for Estonia absconded.

Fotini Rantsiou, a former UN staffer, blamed the high relocation dropout rate on asylum seekers’ fears that they would be sent to a country far from their family and friends.

“As the process drags on, some people get discouraged,” he said. “They feel they won’t get to where their relatives are, so they drop out altogether.”

European migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopolous warned on Friday that the relocation scheme was progressing too slowly.

“So far, only 1,581 persons in need of international protection have been relocated from Greece and Italy,” he said. “Tens of thousands of people continue to remain stranded in Greece and the situation on the ground will not improve in the coming months.”