Military chiefs to aid migration agencies as Scandinavian country that has taken far beyond its share of migrants strains from sheer weight of numbers
Sweden’s army is to help manage the fallout from the country’s refugee crisis, with the civilian administration struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge in arrivals and a top official claiming there is no room left, in the short-term, for migrants reaching Swedish shores.
On Monday, military officers were sent to help coordinate logistics at Migrationsverket, Sweden’s refugee and immigration agency. They will be involved at a management level, rather than on the ground.
For several weeks, Migrationsverket has already been working with the country’s civil contingencies agency (MSB), a department usually involved in the aftermath of natural disasters or in overseas humanitarian catastrophes. The severely short-staffed migration agency cannot find enough housing for refugees, some of whom have been forced to sleep on the floor of reception centres. Despite some centres quadrupling their manpower in recent months, many agency officials are working double-shifts and weekends.
“We don’t have any more space,” the agency’s lead spokesman, Fredrik Bengtsson, said. State-owned accommodation has been full since 2012, he said, and now officials cannot find any more affordable private housing. “For the time being, all of these are finished as well, so for the last three or four nights we’ve had people sleeping in our [non-residential] centres across the country. Right now we’re just looking for people to have a roof over their heads.”
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/sweden-calls-on-army-to-help-manage-refugee-crisis
