9 October 2015

The Greek Council for Refugees has published a report on Samos, following a border monitoring visit carried out in June 2015. Samos the second main point of arrival of refugees in Greece, having so far registered 51,164 arrivals in 2015. 

The report highlights a number of deficiencies in the registration of newly arriving persons, due to shortages in staff and equipment. As there was only one Eurodac fingerprinting machine at the time of visit, fingerprints were often taken manually and stored in the database at a later stage. Given the severely understaffed First Reception Mobile Unit (which only had one official registering arrivals, assisted by two interpreters and one assistant), it has not been possible to register all persons arriving on the island.

Moreover, the Samos Detention Centre, which has a maximum capacity of 240 places, hosted over 800 people at the time of the visit and over 1,000 at a later period. Accordingly, the facility falls short of guaranteeing a dignified standard of living. The report also expresses deep concern with regard to problems in the provision of food, lack of mattresses, poor hygienic conditions, as well as lack of telephone booths for people to contact family members or lawyers.

 

For further information:

 

This article originally appeared in the Asylum Information Database (AIDA) News Section.

 


This article appeared in the ECRE Weekly Bulletin of 9 October 2015. You can subscribe to the Weekly Bulletin here.