Bulgaria Has Capacity to Accept Another 3600 Refugees – Agency Chief

Chairperson of the State Agency for Refguees Nikola Kazakov. File photo

At present, less than 1500 refugees are accommodated in Bulgaria and the country has capacity to accept another 3600 asylum-seekers.

This was announced by Nikola Kazakov, chairperson of the State Agency for Refugees (DAB) in an interview for Focus radio on Thursday.

Kazakov assured that the agency is prepared for the forthcoming winter season, with fuel, medicines and medical aid all supplied.

Funding has also been provided for meeting the living expenses of refugees.

According to the current trend, young men from Afghanistan represent the largest share of people arriving to Bulgaria.

Until a month ago, the largest groups of refugees were from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

However in the past month more and more groups of young Afghan men consisting of 20, 40, 60 people have started to arrive in the country.

In his words, the agency manages to successfully distinguish between refugees and economic migrants.

This was attested by the fact that only 43 % of the 12 000 asylum requests have been approved by the end of September.

Distinguishing between asylum-seekers and economic migrants is a difficult process as the story of each refugee is being examined strictly individually.

He pointed that Afghans are not economic migrants as Afghanistan is not designated as being in the state of war despite the incursion of the Talibans in some regions of the country.

Kazakov added that the Bulgarian borders should be guarded well and according to him the country's border police officers were fulfilling their duties well.

In his opinion, the interest of migrants towards Bulgaria was not higher than usual as traditionally they prefer heading for the more affluent states of Europe.

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