The new temporary camp on Lesvos north of Kara Tepe, on the old shooting range,is starting to take shape. The Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi was on site today and gave a short statement to the press.
By the end of the day, he said, there will be 5000 beds ready, and eventually everyone will be placed in this new temporary camp. First priority will be families and vulnerable people.
As we can see from the picture, there are atm 200 tents in the camp, and if they haven’t additional areas available around this shooting range, there isn’t really room for more tents. These tents are made to house 6 people, and as far as I understand they will put 10 people in each tent. The math is quite simple, even for the Minister, this camp, as is, can only house 2000 people.
To be able to have 5000 beds ready by the end of the day, they would need 500 tents, and to house everyone in need off housing from Moria, 12.000 people, they would need 1200 tents. It seems, once again, that the minister has lost touch with reality, what he claims isn’t possible.
The tents seems to be placed very close to each-other, and that the safe distance between tents, normally 3 meters, to prevent a fire to spread, isn’t followed. Moria went up in flames in a matter of hours, because everything was built to tight, fire safety was ignored, haven’t they learned anything from their mistakes? To see that safety for vulnerable people once again are ignored is shocking, especially after what they just experienced.
This new temporary camp is already fenced in, and as I understand will be a closed camp run by the military. Where they will house everyone that lost their homes in the blaze in Moria remains to be seen, until then people will be scattered around in field’s, car parks and on the roads in the area, and will need support from organizations and NGOs.
The last days we have seen many organizations running fundraising on social media, to support people after the fire. Many of these organizations really needs your support, and are doing an amazing job on the ground. Unfortunately there are also organizations that are taking advantage of this disaster, to benefit on others misery, only to build up their bank accounts, so that they can give themselves even higher salaries. I have seen organizations that hardly have any volunteers on the ground, doing basically nothing to support, take inn hundreds of thousands of euros, this is a concern. When asked what they are doing to support, they answer that they need to assess the situation, evaluate what help is needed.. Its obvious that people needs help NOW, families with children are living in the streets and needs immediate support, not after long evaluations and fancy board meetings.
So please, when you support a organization, and you definitely should, make sure this organization/NGO actually are doing something on the ground, that they are helping NOW, because the money is needed NOW, and shouldn’t go to support a General secretary’s fat salary!