(AP) Greece announced plans Wednesday to overhaul its migration management system, replacing overcrowded refugee camps on the islands with smaller detention facilities and moving some 20,000 asylum seekers to the mainland over the next few weeks.
Deputy Defense Minister Alkiviadis Stefanis announced the changes following a surge in the number of arrivals from nearby Turkey — with the number of migrants and refugees now exceeding the islands’ populations in some cases.
Camps on Lesbos and four other islands in the eastern Aegean Sea are suffering dramatic overcrowding ahead of the winter, with hundreds of families sleeping in tents and often in poor sanitary conditions outside the official facilities.
“In the short term, we will return security and control to the areas affected by the crisis,” Stefanis, the Greek minister, said.
