Nobody is helping local authorities in the northwestern Una-Sana Canton (USK), the area most affected by the migrant crisis in the country, but there is a chance that new migrant reception centres could be set up in both of Bosnia’s semi-autonomous entities which would disburden the USK, the Interior Minister of the Canton, Nermin Kljajic, said on Thursday.
“Nobody is helping us, there is no communication with the state government. We expected that the issue of disburdening the USK by setting up two migrant reception centres, one in Tuzla and another one in Canton Sarajevo. We see that nothing is happening,” Kljajic said, adding that the focus in the country is currently on forming a new Council of Ministers.
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“We hope that the government will soon be formed so that this situation can then be put under control,” he added.
Since the beginning of 2018, scores of migrants have arrived in USK in an attempt to cross the border to Croatia and enter the EU. Locals have been protesting and demanding for the migrants to be accommodated outside of urban areas.
Officials have been proposing several locations for new migrant centres to be set up. But whenever a new area is mentioned, the local community there opposes setting up such a centre.
This is especially true for Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-majority semi-autonomous entity, where leadership has declared that it will not allow any migrant centres to be set up on the entire territory which comprises about half of the country.
According to Kljajic, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), representatives of countries which oversee Bosnia’s peace process, could soon discuss the issue as well.
“We had a visit from the British Embassy. We were promised that member countries of the Peace Implementation Council will discuss the issue of the migrant crisis in Bosnia, with a special emphasis on USK,” he said.
“We were promised that migrant centres will be formed both on the territory of the Federation (FBiH, Bosnia's other entity) and on the territory of Republika Srpska,” he stressed.
He expressed concern over the migrants staying at camp ‘Vucjak’, near the town of Bihac, as the conditions there do not meet the minimum standard for accommodating humans.
There are currently between 500 and 1,000 people staying at Vucjak, while there are about 5,000 of them staying in USK altogether, he said.
