If migrants are living on the streets and in parks, that does not mean authorities are not in control of the situation as many of the migrants refuse to live in designated centres, said Marijan Baotic, aide to Bosnia’s Security Minister.

“Of course, authorities in Bosnia keep control over the situation with migrants, we keep records daily and we know how many migrants entered, that they were recorded, that they are in the system,” he said, adding that the fact many migrants can be found in local parks does not mean authorities are not controlling the migration flow.

“The process of seeking asylum involves giving fingerprints, but they (migrants) are very well informed by those who mentor them: if you leave your fingerprint in a country, be ready to be taken back to the country where you left it if they find you in Western Europe one day,” Baotic said.

The entire border is convenient for crossing, he said. The situation in Bosnia reminds of the one in France before, when migrant camps were set up in the country.

“We don’t have such a movement flow, we have migrants crossing the border at hundreds of locations, the entire border is convenient for crossing,” Baotic said.

“None of them ever came to the official border crossing and said, ‘I am an illegal migrant, I want asylum in Bosnia’. All of them were found within ten kilometres of the border or deeper in Bosnia. We did our best to record these people,” he said.

The Ministry for Security has drafted a plan on how the problem should be dealt with and this plan will be discussed by the government at a session next week, Baotic said.

“In the past five to six days we have seen tents being put up, people living in the open. Everybody knows that Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have the capacities to solve the problem for this number of people,” he said.

However, the capacities the country does have are still not fully used as the migrants refuse to go to migrant centres.

“You have families with five or six children, a car is waiting for them in front of UNITIC (a business centre in Sarajevo) to take them to the asylum centre and they don’t want to get in. It is difficult to understand the way they are thinking. We are trying to,” he said.