ATHENS
\nGreece is to ask neighboring Turkiye to crack down harder on gangs trafficking would-be asylum seekers, a senior migration official said on Thursday.
\n\u201cWe are not doing enough about migrant smugglers. We are raising the issue with our European peers and our Turkish neighbors,\u201d the official said on condition of anonymity.
\n\u201cThe cooperation which we intend to intensify with Turkiye will focus on the war against smuggling networks,\u201d the source added.
\nMigration Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos is expected to discuss the issue with Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya in November.
\nMore than 37,000 asylum seekers entered Greece in the first nine months of the year, mainly from Turkiye, according to ministry figures.
\nArrivals are predicted to reach 50,000 by the end of the year.
\nDisasters involving would-be asylum seekers occur regularly off the coast of Greece, one of the main countries through which people fleeing poverty or war in Africa, Asia and the Middle East seek to enter the European Union.
\nSeveral people have drowned in migrant boat sinkings in recent days.
\nGreek government officials have stressed that the country\u2019s camps \u2014 which can accommodate some 50,000 asylum seekers while their claims for refuge are processed \u2014 are not currently under pressure.
\nBut two key new facilities have faced obstacles.
\nThe EU in 2021 allocated 155 million euros ($167 million) to the Greek government to build new camps on the Aegean islands of Lesbos and Chios.
\nBut work on both projects has been held up by local opposition.
\nIn Chios, the plan may have to be scrapped altogether, the ministry official admitted on Thursday.
\nLesbos, meanwhile, has faced an ongoing dispute about widening a road through a pristine forest to the new camp, which is nearly complete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATHENS Greece is to ask neighboring Turkiye to crack down harder on gangs trafficking would-be asylum seekers, a senior migration official said on Thursday. \u201cWe are not doing enough about migrant smugglers. We are raising the issue with our European peers and our Turkish neighbors,\u201d the official said on condition of anonymity. \u201cThe cooperation which …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":72050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72055,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72035\/revisions\/72055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}