Refugees face difficulties with winter's arrival in Macedonia

Situation of the refugees at the transit camps near Gevgelija on Macedonia's southern border with Greece is becoming everyday worse, Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations working in Macedonia said on Saturday.

Migrants sheltered in the main camps in Macedonia are experiencing electricity shortages. Most affected of this situation are the children and the elderly people who are not used to the low temperatures, consequently a large number of them have caught cold, feel weary and cannot continue their voyage toward Serbia.

After arriving from Greece, most refugees only stay in the Macedonian camp for a few hours, getting tea and winter clothing and blankets, before boarding trains towards the northern border.

Authorities group refugees into batches of about 50 people and allow go first women, children, the elderly and sick persons.

Mohammad Arif, from the UN Agency for Refugees, UNHCR, in Macedonia stated that the police are doing a great job by organizing refugees, but "we would be grateful if they respected their rights in full and did not use force."

Red Cross and UNHCR teams are offering assistance as much as they can, by providing them with winter clothes, hot meals, which are still not sufficient.

At the Gevgelija reception camp, five large tents and around 10 houses, with the capacity to accommodate more than 1,000 people, have no heating. Only the small tents set up by UNICEF have heating. The rest of the facilities do not have the appropriate installation and there is no heating at all, reported Macedonian media.

Meanwhile, in the northern border Tabanovce camps, the situation is even worse, where heating has not been installed at all and the three large tents and the two houses that have the capacity to accommodate 1,000 people in total, have not been warmed up at all.

A humanitarian worker declared that "I wonder how the competent people at the Ministry were surprised by the cold weather in December. When the migrants arrive at the reception center the first thing they ask about is why there isn't any heating and we don't know what to answer them."

Humanitarian activists claim that this situation is due to the lack of inappropriate response by the Macedonia Labor and Social Policy Ministry.

In November, the Labor and Social Policy Ministry has received a grant of 2 million euros (around 2.19 million U.S. dollars) by the Council of Europe Development Bank for these purposes, still the delays of the procedures have caused that lack of offering better conditions to the refugees, like heating and warm tents at the reception centers.

A three-km fence has been erected on the border near Gevgelija and meanwhile Macedonia is restricting entry to refugees from three war-torn countries only, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Endit