The migrant crisis in Bosnia will end neither quickly nor easily, BIH Security Minister Selmo Cikotic said Wednesday at the round table in Sarajevo titled “Migrant crisis – Bosnia 2020.”
According to him, the state parliament should declare the migrant camp Lipa a temporary reception centre.
“There's a plan to use the Bira camp capacities to the accommodation of migrants for two to three months until Lipa is ready,” Cikotic said.
He clarified that the decisions of the Council of Ministers, as the state government is officially called, on the formation of working groups for the development of a five-year strategy for migration management will be finalized soon.
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“With a certain set of measures, we managed to significantly reduce the number of migrants in BiH, but also to reduce their influx across the eastern border,” Cikotic added.
The coordinator for humanitarian operations of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Drazen Rozic, said that EU funds significantly improved the conditions in the camps regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
“However, migrants who are outside the camps don't have any health care and there's a danger of spreading the infection without knowing that they are infected,” Rozic added.
According to the country's Service for Foreigners’ Affairs, migrant reception centres in Una-Sana Canton have reached capacity and there are currently over 3,200 migrants are staying there.
At least as many migrants are staying in two reception centres in the area of Sarajevo and the country's Security Ministry estimates that up to 8,000 illegal migrants are currently staying in Bosnia.
