Our View: We need speedier asylum procedures not more camps

The despair of the interior minister Nicos Nouris about the migration situation is understandable. The inflow of migrants has steadily continued, causing the overcrowding of the Pournara migrant reception centre in Kokkinotrimithia, which on Monday night was the setting for a mass brawl along ethnic lines involving some 600 people. Thirty-five people were injured and damage was done to the facilities as Syrians and Africans, who are segregated, clashed for reasons that remain unclear.

The facilities were at breaking point, said Nouris, who explained that Pournara, which had a capacity for around 1,000 people was hosting 1,500, while Kophinou was at its full capacity. “The country can no longer receive more irregular migrants,” he said, explaining that in the past six days there were more arrivals of Africans and Syrians via Turkey, the majority of whom were single males between 25 and 40. “This is no longer a refugee issue,” he said and nobody could disagree with him. These were economic migrants hoping to enter the EU via Cyprus.

The representative of the UNHCR in Cyprus, told the Cyprus News Agency that “overcrowded conditions at the centre and the ensuing pressure on existing infrastructure often triggers tensions.” What would be the answer? To build even more hosting facilities and turn the island into a ‘migrant centre for third world nationals wanting to gain entry into the EU’? Another reception facility is currently under construction in Menoyia, but this is not the answer to a problem that is becoming more pressing by the day.

Nor is the sending of more personnel of the European Asylum Support Service to Cyprus (EASO) as was announced on Wednesday. The number of personnel it will dispatch to Cyprus will be 185, more than double that of last year, and will include interpreters, caseworkers, vulnerability experts, research officers and field support staff. Will the arrival of EASO staff stop the arrival of migrants from Turkey, either by boat or from the north via the buffer zone?

In fact the only reason the migrants cannot be sent back to their countries through summary procedures, is because of EU directives on asylum applications, the abuse of which by migrants has never been addressed. Perhaps this is the reason it takes the Cyprus authorities so long to process these applications. The government has repeatedly declared that it would take measures to speed up the processing of applications, hiring more staff and simplifying procedures, so that migrants would not end up staying here for years, awaiting a response.

This target has yet to be met, even though speedy procedures that would lead to the repatriation of migrants, a couple of months after arriving, is the only way of dealing with the problem. The government must put its resources into solving these problems instead of building more hosting facilities.