The Bihać city organization of the Red Cross, with the help of the organization “Balkan Route” from Vienna and the Italian “Ipsia”, has secured and adapted the necessary space for a new meal center, where daily meals for migrants and refugees will be prepared and distributed.
The organization “Balkan Route” provided funds for a one-year rental and adaptation of the space in the Bihać settlement Vedro Polje, the purchase of a large refrigerator, as well as certain appliances. Significant help came from “Ipsia” in the form of food, and now we have an adequate space and all the necessities to distribute daily meals for about 1,500 migrants in the reception camps “Lipa” and “Borići”, said the secretary of the Red Cross of Bihać Selam Midžić.
In this way, all the preconditions for preparing and serving two cooked meals a day for all service users in the mentioned temporary reception camps have been created and this should be realized very quickly.
“The Red Cross of the Una-Sana Canton provides breakfast every day, while so far we have taken care of the cooked meal at lunch. Now we have the conditions to prepare and introduce another cooked meal for dinner. So, in the new kitchen, we daily prepare up to 3,000 cooked meals,” Midžić added.
He pointed out that the new kitchen will be at the service of the local population in case of need, especially if there is
About 750 migrants and refugees arrived in Una-Sana Canton (USK) in the first 15 days of March alone – it was confirmed by the Cantonal Police Administration. “At the entrance to the canton near Bosanska Krupa, about 500 migrants were registered this month alone, while about 250 people arrived near Ključ and headed towards Bihać or Velika Kladuša. We stop them at these checkpoints, but we are aware that we cannot hermetically close the entire area, and that they find their way to their temporary destinations, “said USC police spokesman Ale Siljdedic. In four temporary reception camps in Bihać, Cazin and Velika Kladuša, all accommodation capacities are currently filled, considering that about 2,500 people are taken care of in them.
According to the USC Ministry of the Interior, almost the same number of migrants and refugees live in city streets, public areas and abandoned buildings as in camps.
“It is evident that we are facing a new wave of migrants, which we expected with the arrival of better weather. We have to take certain actions, because a large number of people are staying in abandoned buildings and on the streets, without any control. We hope that an appropriate solution will be found for these people outside our canton, given that we cannot adequately take care of them and that it is really impossible and inadmissible to open new reception centers in this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, “said USC Prime Minister Mustafa Ružnić.
The problem of insufficient cooperation and lack of interest of the owners of the facilities inhabited by a large number of migrants and refugees was also pointed out, with special emphasis on the insecurity and neglect of the unfinished building of the Retirement Home, ie the former Krajinametal facility in Bihać.
