He allegedly missed the bus to another location he was destined for, because the transfer was not communicated to him properly. He subsequently signed a document he did not understand and lost his place in the reception center, ending up on the streets. The testimony of an asylum seeker who arrived in Trieste from Pakistan was collected by Primorski dnevnik, a Trieste newspaper published in Slovenian.
According to the newspaper, in an attempt to resolve the overcrowding of reception centers, the Prefecture of Trieste has long been organizing transfers of asylum seekers to other regions, the newspaper recalls.
"The operators told me that on October 3 they would transfer twenty people to Sardinia. They posted a list with the names on a noticeboard and mine was in 22nd place. I was convinced that it was not my bus and that I would leave on the next one," the man said. The next day - the Primorski dnevnik reconstructs - he was presented with a letter from the Prefecture.
“No one told me what I was signing,” he added. But it was a revocation of his place in the reception center, after he missed transportation from Trieste without a valid reason.
Now the man is taking refuge in abandoned warehouses in the Old Port. According to an estimate by the newspaper, there could be more than fifteen similar cases.
As Gianfranco Schiavone, president of the Italian Solidarity Consortium, explained, the Prefecture should notify each individual on headed paper of the decision with the date and time of the transfer in a language that the person understands. In this case, as the newspaper reports, it was the reception center operators who communicated the departure to the refugees. This transfer procedure, according to Schiavone, is irregular.
"Consequently, the decision to revoke the reception of an asylum seeker if he does not get on the bus is also illegal."
(Online Union)
