A tragic situation has been unfolding on Rhodes: Hundreds of migrants, among them many children, are sleeping in tents and cardboard boxes in the capital of the island in the south-eastern Aegean Sea.
In extremely inhumane conditions, hundreds of women, children and men, young and old, are sleeping in cardboard boxes, in blankets and, in best case, in tents they have been set up in the squares and parks of the island.
According to a report by local newspaper rodiaki.gr, there are currently more than 700 immigrants without legal documents in Rhodes and if the necessary transfer does not conclude in due time, their number is expected to only go up.
Local authorities blame the central government for not organizing the transfer of the migrants to structures either on neighboring islands likes Kos and Leros or to the mainland.
In statements to the local daily, the president of the Union of Police Officers of the South Dodecanese, Manolis Androulakis, requested for one more time that the migrant structures of Leros and Kos be decongested by transferring the foreigners who are there to the mainland, so that capacities can be created and they can function in the form they have.
Androulakis complained that, not only there no transfers to Kos structure where it accommodates only 50% of its capacity, but that also transfers to the mainland have been cancelled.
For example, the transfer of 120 migrants from Rhodes to Piraeus and from there to Diavata in northern Greece was arranged in the previous days, but since it was not possible to transfer them to their final destination (Diavata), the transfer was cancelled altogether, he pointed out.
According to mayor of Rhodes, Alexandros Koliadis, the essential problem in everything to do with immigration and the increased number that is currently in full swing, concerns among others the huge lack of staff that has been recorded in recent years years in the services of the Port Authorities, but also the Police.
Rodiaki front page: Rhodes is suffocating and the ministries don’t care.
News about arrivals of migrants of several nationalities on Rhodes and other islands of the eastern Aegean Sea are now daily before the cold months with rough seas set in.
