/ 9 September 2008

Some refugees refuse to leave shelter, says Gauteng

Some residents of the Rand Airport shelter for people displaced by xenophobic violence are refusing to leave, a Gauteng government spokesperson says.

Some residents of the Rand Airport shelter for people displaced by xenophobic violence are refusing to leave, even though they have been given money to find new accommodation, a Gauteng government spokesperson said on Tuesday.

”Some have received money from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], but are refusing to leave Rand Airport,” said Thabo Masebe.

About 2 000 people are still living in the shelters, which were hastily erected when about 20 000 people left their homes and sought protection during countrywide attacks on foreigners in May.

”We may be forced to take some of them out,” said Masebe.

The residents have until at least the end of September to find somewhere else to live, according to a Constitutional Court judgement.

The UNHCR gave them money to find new accommodation, but Masebe said the government is worried that they will exhaust this money while living in the camps and will be penniless on the closing date.

Camp officials have also discovered that people not registered to be at the camps have managed to slip through security to set up home on the site.

Meanwhile, sites in Cape Town are also being closed as numbers in the shelters dwindle.

The City of Cape Town decided that because most of the shelters’ residents are Muslim, they will not close until the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

More than 60 people died during the violence. — Sapa