Last update - 00:00 29/01/2008
T.A. mayor to PM: Help treat African refugees before crisis erupts
By Yigal Hai, Haaretz Correspondents
The Tel Aviv municipality is in urgent need of the government's assistance in order to avoid "what is turning into a humanitarian crisis" among the African refugees living in the city, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
In the past year, 2000 Afrcan refugees, mostly from Eritrea, Sudan, Darfur and the Ivory Coast have arrived in Tel Aviv, 700 of them in the past few days alone.
According to Huldai, the city hall has opened a number of municipal shelters for the refugees and have supplied them with basic necessities such as mattresses, blankets, medicine, education.
However, Huldai warns that the conditions in the temporary shelters are bad and that the city cannot support the refugees on their own.
"In the past few days," Huldai writes, "we are witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of refugees that the government has passed on to the city upon their release from Ketziot prison."
"Dozens of additional refugees arrive every day, and the municipality does not have the resources to continue to supply them with shelter and the basic services they deserve."
Huldai stated that the city was receiving assistance from volunteer organizations however "unfortunately, our request for government aide has fallen on deaf ears."
The Tel Aviv mayor asked Olmert to "hold an urgent meeting with the relevant government officials in order to solve this national problem before it becomes a humanitarian crisis".
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