The secretary of the Local Committee of the Canarian Coalition in Arrecife, Jacobo Lemes, and the first deputy mayor of the capital's City Council, Echedey Eugenio, have demanded "urgent and immediate solutions" to put an end to the "overcrowding" of human beings in "makeshift concentration camps." They have also asked the State Prosecutor's Office to act and assess the commission of possible crimes by those responsible.
The nationalists recall that in the Report of the Public Prosecutor's Office on the year 2022, the State Prosecutor's Office, based on the reports of the delegated prosecutor for Trafficking and Immigration of the Las Palmas Prosecutor's Office, highlights that "the CATE of Lanzarote, located on a plot of land lacking shade, is made up of tents, and with non-fixed facilities typical of a camp (...) ". The same report states that "there should be permanent facilities that guarantee immediate reception in dignified conditions for the constant flow of arrivals," and specifies that the CATE of Lanzarote does not meet these minimum conditions.
The Prosecutor's Office also reveals that all these reports from the delegated prosecutor "have been submitted to the competent authorities, highlighting the poor conditions of the Centers referred to, without the problems detected having been solved to date."
The arrival of boats that the island has experienced at the beginning of October "has overwhelmed the facilities of the Temporary Foreigner Reception Center (CATE), which is located in the capital of the island" and which, as the nationalists have denounced on multiple occasions, "does not meet the conditions for these people to be attended to with minimum conditions of hygiene, health and dignity."
"As if this were not enough, Puerto Naos has once again become a Dante-esque spectacle, where makeshift huts, chemical toilets and mattresses provided by the Security and Emergency Consortium have tried to make up for the incompetence of a government that continues to look the other way as if migration policies had nothing to do with it," the nationalist party said in a statement.
The nationalists do not understand "why it is so difficult to apply the policies that depend exclusively on the State to put an end once and for all to the drama of irregular migration, nor why those who have the power to provide solutions continue to allow people to die on board a boat."
"We must ensure respect for the lives of these people and guarantee sanitary conditions when they arrive on our coasts," add the leaders of CC Arrecife.
The situation is repeated every year around this time, the good condition of the sea encourages the increase in the number of boats that arrive on the island, "but we are still not prepared." The needs are increasing "and the only decision taken in the last year was to raise the walls of the Center so that the shameful facilities are not seen, which have little to envy from a concentration camp," recalls CC.
