/ 28 May 2008

BBC: Refugee camps for migrants

Seven refugee camps are to be set up around the country for foreigners who have fled xenophobic attacks in South Africa, the BBC website reported on Wednesday.

The holding camps will take up to 70 000 people from increasingly unsanitary conditions at temporary shelters put up around state and municipal buildings and police stations.

The government decision ”comes despite strong advice from respected international aid agencies,” said the BBC.

Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF), the medical charity, was quoted as saying conditions for people seeking refuge in existing shelters were worsening.

‘You can’t call them refugee camps’

Siobhan McCarthy, the chief director of communications at the Department of Home Affairs, denied on Wednesday that camps would be set up, saying rather that ”temporary shelters” would be established ”to bring relief to police stations and community halls that are housing foreigners”.

”You can’t call them refugee camps, because all the foreigners are not refugees,” McCarthy told the Mail & Guardian Online.

”The shelters will make it easier to coordinate humanised services, such as medical help. These shelters will also have the necessary security, water and sanitation services as well as food.

McCarthy said the Department of Social Development, and disaster management teams are busy setting the shelters up and they should be up and runnning this week.

Aid agencies feared the government had little experience of running what were likely to become semi-permanent refugee camps, the website, quoting BBC Africa editor Martin Plaut, said, adding that establishing such camps could come back to haunt the country for many years to come.

MSF said it was finding cases of diarrhoea and chest infections in overcrowded shelters near Johannesburg.

The International Red Cross’s Francoise Le Goff told the BBC it was vital that displaced people left the temporary shelters.

”We have problems with sanitation; it’s cold; people are getting sick, so their security is barely there,” she said.

The BBC said Cabinet was expected to announce its plans later on Wednesday.

Fifty-six people have been killed and more than 650 injured in the attacks which started in Alexandra, Johannesburg, on May 11.