First Ukrainian refugees travel to Algarve in coming days

The first Ukrainian refugees should arrive in the Algarve in the next few days on a bus that will leave for Poland «within a day or two», with the aim of «collecting refugees who really want to come here to the Algarve», he revealed to the Sul Informação Igor Korbeliak, president of the Association of Ukrainians in the Algarve.

The association representing Ukrainians living in the Algarve region has been “working with city councils and the High Commissioner for Migration in order to arrange documentation”.

“Europe and Poland are making it very easy and allowing people to cross the border, even without the necessary documentation in normal times”, revealed Igor Korbeliak.

“For now, most of the people who will come have family members here or know someone here. Portugal is quite far from Ukraine and people try to find a place in the closest countries”, she added.

In other words, what will work is the family network and close relationships, which means that many of these people will have a place to stay.

Even so, the association is “studying and working on housing issues. We are making a list of people and it depends a lot on how many people come per family, if there are children… we are going to work in this direction».

"Right now, as far as I know, there are still only cases in which it is the family network that is responding or that is going to Poland or Romania to bring the family", revealed, for his part, Armindo Vicente, president of the Secretariat of the Misericórdias do Algarve.

But, in the future, it is foreseen that there will be a need to prepare an extended reception network and the Algarve region, even for the large Ukrainian community that exists here, will not be left out.

The União das Misericórdias Portuguesas (UMP) has already started to survey the response capacity of its members, a work that began “even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, after a challenge launched by the minister Ana Mendes Godinho.

“União de Misericórdias manages refugee centers and has equipment that can receive people. In the case of refugee centres, they are prepared to receive people for a longer period of time. In other equipment, it will be a more transitory solution», explained Armindo Vicente.

«We have refugee centers in Santa Casa da Misericórdia in Faro and that of Silves. Then, as happened in the Monchique fire, there is the possibility of installing informal equipment, which can temporarily accommodate people, until a solution is found”, he added.

However, in this first phase, the answer will be given “by the normal Social Security services and the family network”.

The UMP also wanted to know, “in the case of greater permanence of families, if the institutions had jobs to provide people”.

All this work is in progress and «it is still too early to give numbers, since we don't know how many people will look for us», concluded Armindo Vicente.