SA government won’t accommodate Afghan refugees – Daily Friend
SA refuses to take Afghan refugees
The South African government has said it will not accommodate any refugees from Afghanistan, even if they are eventually to be sent to a third country.
Clayson Monyela, a spokesperson for the Department for International Relations and Co-operation (DIRCO), said that the government was not in a position to accommodate the refugees. He said that South Africa also had a significant number of refugees and was 'seized' with addressing their needs.
Monyela said that the refugees were best served by staying in the first country they had arrived in – in this case Pakistan – while they were waiting for asylum elsewhere.
According to Geoffrey York, the Johannesburg-based Africa correspondent for a Canadian newspaper, the Globe & Mail, South Africa had only been asked to accommodate 126 refugees and funding for them had been guaranteed for at least six months.
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