After having crossed thousands of kilometers via land from Afghanistan or Pakistan, 25 asylum seekers have been waiting outside the prefect's office in the Italian city of L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo region, for 10 days with no place to go.
Despite the cold, the group of about 25 Afghani and Pakistani asylum seekers have been sleeping in front of the local prefect's office in the town of L'Aquila, in the east-central Abruzzo region of Italy.
The group, all men between the ages of 20 and 30 -- who arrived in Italy's northeastern city of Trieste via the so-called Balkan route have been without housing for the past ten days in the capital of the Abruzzo region.
Housing facilities for asylum seekers are full and no available places for them have yet been found, and thus the migrants spend the night in stations, parks, and in front of the prefect's office -- the office representing the national government -- where they are awaiting updates.
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Asylum procedure blocked by bureaucratic 'short circuit'
Their asylum requests have been halted by a bureaucratic requirement: to file the request, they need to indicate an address where they live or that of the facilities they are staying in. For the moment, they are homeless and thus have no address.
The appointment for making the request official is on December16; in the meantime, the 25 men are left out in the freezing cold while some local residents are donating food, blankets, and sleeping bags.
The prefect's office is aware of the situation and verification is underway with the relevant bodies to find a solution, especially as the temperature is likely to drop considerably in the next few weeks.
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NGO 'can host them during the day but not at night'
The Fraterna Tau association, which runs the Celestino soup kitchen in the area of Piazza d'Armi and which in recent days has been providing meals and showers for the group of asylum seekers that arrived in the city, has reported a lack of a shelter in the city, that was partially destroyed in a 2009 earthquake.
"We can host them during the day but we do not have any more places at night. This is a need that we have communicated for years," said the association's chief, Paolo Giorgi.
The building where the NGO is located is in the western suburb of the city, making it difficult to arrive on foot from the historic center of the city where the government buildings are.
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Thousands of kilometers from Afghanistan and Pakistan
Giorgi said that most of the migrants were from Afghanistan and Pakistan and had arrived in Italy following lengthy journeys along the Balkan route.
"They came via land. They travel for years, crossing through several different countries," he said.
The association chief stressed that there has also been a progressive increase in the number of people assisted. "They arrive here through word of mouth. They know that in L'Aquila there is a network of associations and a police headquarters that work in a short period of time compared with other places in the [Italian] peninsula. However, without a public shelter, the city does not have the operating means to handle situations like this. We have proposed many times to the town council to make lodgings available" from a current housing project, Giorgi said.
"We would do this for free."
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