A few days after the Citizens’ Protection Ministry heralded the second wave of a repatriation scheme aimed at returning thousands of migrants to their homelands, the Greek office of the International Office for Migration (IOM), which is managing the repatriation program, says it has yet to receive funding for the first phase.
The second phase of the program has been budgeted at 800,000 euros. But, the director of the IOM’s Athens office, Daniel Esdras, said that his office has yet to receive the funding for the first phase of the program, launched early last year, due to changes in the way the state disburses money.
Esdras said his office had received more than 1,500 applications from migrants wanting to return home. “Many people want to go home but they don’t have the means to do it,” Esdras said. The cost of returning one migrant home is around 1,300 euros.
The news came as Greek Deputy Labor Minister Anna Dalara confirmed on Thursday that the government is examining ways of relaxing requirements for economic migrants to renew their residence permits.
“A law-making committee is looking at two things: reducing the number of social security credits needed, especially in some types of work where it is impossible for them to be collected; and at imposing tough sanctions on employers who do not register their workers, not just migrants,” Dalara told Greek radio.
There is concern that the impact of the economic crisis and rising unemployment means that some immigrants living in Greece legally will fall short of the number of social insurance credits required.
However, Dalara insisted that the government would expel migrants from the country if they do not have the proper documents or if they do not meet the necessary requirements.
“We have laws and this means that some people will have to go,” she said.
Source: English Kathimerini