individuals who shall be detained in view of their individual specifics, health status, age,
vulnerability should be set precisely in the amended Law.
Stay
The main problems are related to the very poor hygiene, which the administration in
these places is not obliged to maintain. Some of the accommodated individuals do not
want to clean the premises where they are staying. Monthly allowance amounting to BGN
65 is paid to the individuals accommodated, which is insufficient to meet their needs for
food, clothes and medicines. The subsistence problems is resolved to some extent by
means of donations from the Bulgarian Red Cross (BRC) and organised volunteer
campaigns.
The people in these centres stay there until they are given refugee status or humanitarian
status. Another option to leave the home is to declare ability to independently sustain
oneself and an external address at which the applicants for protection shall reside. In
these cases the individuals seeking protection waive their right to monthly allowance. The
NPM team found that the applications for external addresses do not state more than 3-4
addresses. No institution has practically checked these addresses. The NPM team has
visited one of these addresses in Svilengrad and found that there is a newly built and
uninhabited house there. In this case the Ombudsman is concerned that more than 2500
applicants for protection have stated such fictitious addresses.
Although the applications from Syrian refugees are handled under an accelerated
procedure, their number is so significant that the officers of the SAR process them with
delays. The NPM team found that the human resources - interviewers, registrars, and
interpreters - are insufficient at the time of the inspection and are unable to address
adequately the refugee crisis emerging. Another human-resource related problem is the
lack of motivation for the personnel, linked to the specific work, the huge workload and
the low remuneration level.
Medical care
The NPM team found significant differences between the opinions of the different officers
as to the medical problems and needs of the people seeking protection. The lack of
feedback not only between the separate administrations, but between the different levels
within one and the same system is obvious.
The following important problems and omissions emerge from medical standpoint:
Hygiene - epidemiological problems
- the concentration of a large number of people in small space, which hypothetically
creates favourable environment for the spreading of infectious diseases;
- extremely poor hygiene conditions that people seeking protection are accommodated in;
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