Athens – At least 20,000 migrants are waiting to be processed at Greek Registration Centres and Camps in the Aegean Region of the Country, according to a data released on Thursday by the Ministry for Migration.
The number of people in the camps on Greece’s Aegean islands has decreased to 18,000 in mid-October, the report said.
However, more migrants are now leaving Turkey and crossing the Aegean to Greece’s islands than can be processed and transferred to the mainland, one member of the Greek coastguard told dpa.
Greek migration authorities have repeatedly said that processing the asylum applications was taking so long due to a lack of personnel.
In order to alleviate the burden on the islands, the authorities began to transfer over 7,000 more migrants to mainland Greece, since May.
The migrants transferred to the mainland were those particularly in need of special protection such as families, single women, minors or members of specific religious minorities
One of the worst affected places is the island of Samos where there are 5,000 people waiting to be processed in a camp that has capacity for 648 people.
The camps on the islands Lesbos and Chios are also overcrowded and struggling to deal with the influx. (Dpa/NAN)