State Agency for Refugees

The chairperson of the State Agency for Refugees (DAB) Nikola Kazakov stated on Saturday that Bulgaria should grant over 10 000 people with refugee status by the end of the year.

Kazakov said that most of the refugees in Bulgaria were Kurds from Syria and Iraq and nearly half of the newcomers in 2015 were illiterate.

Director of the temporary refugee center in Harmanli, Marko Petrov has been suspended from office Thursday.

The order was given by the Chair of the State Agency for Refugees with the Council of Ministers in Bulgaria, Nikola Kazakov on February 27.

Accommodation centers hosting asylum seekers and refugees across Bulgaria are to be imposed a curfew as of Monday, February 2.

The measure will prevent about 3700 of refugees from leaving their compounds after 20:00 EET, or 22:00 EEST in the summer.

Bulgaria's National Audit Office has made clear that the implementation of the national program for the integration of refugees in the period 2011-2013 failed to produce any effect.

Bulgarian municipalities with refugee accommodation centers and those involved in integration programmes will receive significant subsidies.

This was announced by the chief secretary of the State Agency for Refugees (DAB) Zlatko Aleksandrov on Thursday, daily Standart reports.

Aleksandrov explained that the funding will be mainly allocated to infrastructure projects.

Defense Minister Nikolay Nenchev has said that the army would be inefficient in operations involving guarding the Bulgarian-Turkish border.

In a Friday interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Nenchev commented on the proposal for joint patrols of the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry at the Bulgarian-Turkish border.

Nikola Kazakov, former Chair of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees, has been reappointed as head of the unit.

Kazakov was reappointed as Chair of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees during Wednesday's sitting of the government without a competition.

The number of asylum seekers from Afghanistan has increased more than four times in the last year, Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees told Dnevnik.bg.

Since the beginning of the year, a total of 1397 Afghans have been accommodated in the Agency's centers, while their number in 2013 was 310.

The refugee influx to Bulgaria doubled in the last few months, the State Agency for Refugees informs.

According to Vasil Varbanov, deputy chairman of the Agency, Bulgaria can receive some 6 thousand migrants.

Out of a total of over 520 refugee children living in Bulgaria, only 96 will go to school in the new school year, according to the State Agency for Refugees.

A total of 424 refugee children will not be able to attend classes as of September 15, despite the assurances of Bulgarian authorities of a swift solution of the problem, according to reports of Sega daily.