State Agency for Refugees head heard in Parliament

State Agency for Refugees Head Mariana Tosheva said in Parliament on Wednesday that as early as this week 30 30 people from the refugee centre in Sofia's Ovcha Kupel district will be transferred to the State Agency for Refugees' centre in the village of Banya, central Bulgaria.

She and outgoing Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov were answering questions regarding recent incidents with migrants at the request of Vazrazhdane and BSP for Bulgaria.

Other persons will be gradually transferred to other centres, she said. Tosheva clarified that the centre in Ovcha Kupel is the oldest and is extremely dilapidated, which is why the Agency is doing everything possible to close it, since there is now a possibility of redirecting people..

Tosheva pointed out that the department is underfunded. "According to the budget forecast for this year we had asked for BGN 22.5 million, the approved budget for the agency is BGN 11.700 million, of which a little over BGN 7 million are for staff salaries, i.e. the rest of the funds are used for running operations," Tosheva said.

She noted that in 2023 the Agency had experienced great difficulties, especially with the increased number of asylum seekers after June-July. In the centre in Harmanli, there were 36 staff per nearly 1,600 people, Tosheva said.

Tosheva further noted that the staff of the State Agency for Refugees includes 100 persons under the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, but the funding under the Fund was interrupted in the period January 1 - August 30, 2023. The so-called grant agreement, under which the Agency was able to re-hire the full-time positions financed by the Fund, was concluded at the beginning of September 2023 and to date 74 positions have been filled, Tosheva added. She added that due to lack of funding, 85 staff members were laid off as of January 1 2023, which is when the previous multi-year funding period ended. 

Tosheva told the MPs that in 2022, 2023 and 2024 incidents were registered in the refugee centres, but they were less than 30 per year, and so far 2024 saw just one of domestic nature in Ovcha Kupel, which went outside the centre. There are 400 people accommodated there, 127 of them teenagers, mainly young men, they are essentially traumatised people, but domestic incidents rarely go outside, Tosheva noted.

According to her, in the last 18 months the number of applications for international protection was less than 8,000, in April-May 2022 there were just over 14,000 in procedure. The State Agency for Refugees issued the relevant decisions within the legal deadline, they were subject to judicial review, the Head assured. 

She specified that the territorial units of the department accommodate people who have applied for protection, not migrants. Persons who had been granted international protection for a transitional period also stayed there for 14 days. Under international law, they must be accommodated in open-type centres. When they are accommodated, there is a screening procedure and they are assigned a movement area, with sanctions following in the event of a breach. One of the most severe sanctions is being placed in a closed-type centre, which currently has 16 places. This measure is resorted to in case of hooliganism or a more serious offence, such persons are taken over by the investigative authorities, but in general the percentage is very low - 2-3%, Tosheva said.

She said that the refugee centres are currently safeguarded by private security companies. Tosheva said the Agency welcomes the possibility of unarmed protection of the centres by the structures of the Interior Ministry, and noted the security of the centre residents, the employees and all citizens in the respective towns is of utmost importance for the Agency.