site.btaGovernment Revokes Refugee Integration Ordinance

Government Revokes Refugee
Integration
Ordinance


Sofia, March 31 (BTA) - The caretaker government held an extraordinary meeting on Friday to revoke an ordinance by the previous government on integration of refugees.

Announcing their decision, Labour and Social Policy Minister Galab Donev and Interior Minister Plamen Uzunov said that the ordinance was revoked "in order to find incentives for better integration of refugees in this country".

A working group of experts from several ministries will have by April 7 to prepare a new ordinance and submit it for approval to the government.

Adopted last August, the ordinance which the caretaker government scrapped, provided for arrangements which municipalities could make for the integration of foreigners who have obtained refugee or another international protected status. These included arrangements for the settlers' housing accommodation, kindergartens and schools for the children, registration with a general practitioner, registration at the National Employment Agency and the Agency for Social Assistance. The integration arrangements were meant to use financing from international and national programme, including EU funding.

The National Association of Municipalities in Bulgaria has expressed the position that depopulated Bulgarian municipalities can durably integrate refugees. Its chairman Ginka Chavdarova has said that the target municipalities would not be such with a depleted social infrastructure capacity but such having unused infrastructure due to depopulation, "so that the local community would not feel discriminated or ousted by anybody". She was adamant that municipalities "are ready for and intend to welcome family-type migration, which will enliven the area, will diversify labour supply, and will open up prospects to deserted areas".

The ordinance was slammed as discriminatory by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) from its very adoption and they argued that Bulgarian people do not enjoy the same treatment in their own country as that promised to refugees. Revoking the ordinance was also a highlight on the election platform of President Rumen Radev when he campaigned for the presidency. LN/


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