site.btaPrime Minister, Ministers Discuss New Measures to Curb Refugee Influx, Possibility to Deploy Military Personnel

Prime Minister, Ministers Discuss New Measures to Curb Refugee Influx, Possibility to Deploy Military Personnel

Sofia, August 21 (BTA) - Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, Interior
 Minister Roumyana Buchvarova, Finance Minister Vladislav
Goranov and Refugee Agency chief Nikola Kazakov held a meeting
on Friday to discuss the situation with the influx of refugees.

Emerging from the meeting, Goranov said that a request for
additional funding by the Interior Ministry was not at issue and
 added that the meeting focused on the risks related to the
influx of refugees at the Bulgarian border. Asked whether the
meeting had discussed the allocation of additional funds to
address the problem, Goranov said that all consequences for the
state are being considered.

Interior Minister Roumyana Buchvarova said that the meeting
considered possibilities to deploy Bulgarian military personnel
to strengthen and improve prevention at the borders with Greece
and Macedonia. Extending additional funds had not been on the
agenda, said Buchvarova. According to her, there is no increased
 migratory pressure at the moment.

Buchvarova said this was a regular meeting of the operational
task force monitoring the refugee influx to which the Prime
Minister had been invited.

For his part, Refugee Agency chief Nikola Kazakov said that the
refugee flow has doubled compared with the like period of 2014.
He said that enough funds are available and that refugee centres
 are filled at 68 per cent of their capacity. Kazakov said that
the procedure for processing new migrants is decentralized and
there is no concentration of refugees in central Sofia. He added
 there was no information that refugees were redirecting from
Macedonia to Bulgaria.