Migrant crisis on Lampedusa Island forces Italian govt to intervene
Max Civili
Press TV, Rome
After weeks of tension on the Island of Lampedusa due to the increase of refugee arrivals, the Italian government has committed to deal with the issue by sending quarantine ships to take the refugees to other parts of the country.
Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has announced his government will immediately deal with an overcrowded refugee hotspot on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. The situation on the Sicilian island erupted on Sunday after the landing of a fishing boat carrying nearly 370 migrants.
The next day Lampedusa authorities threatened a general strike due to the migrant emergency cramming its migrant center past bursting point. Lampedusa's refugee center is designed to accommodate 190 refugees. It is now housing nearly twelve hundred.
Italian prime minister Conte has pledged that the government would dispatch five quarantine ships to Lampedusa island to take the refugees to other parts of Italy where they can be processed more effectively.
Lampedusa has long been one of the main landing spots for asylum seekers trying to reach Europe from Africa. Over the past weeks, hundreds of refugees escaped quarantine facilities on Sicily's western coast where they had been tested for COVID-19 by health authorities.
The number of sea arrivals through the Mediterranean Sea in Italy from January 1 stands at about 20,000 which is roughly four times up compared to the same period last year.
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