Italian pro-migrant associations which operate asylum reception centres have blasted populist Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for cutting funding.
The associations complain that kennels for dogs are currently receiving more money than the migrant reception centres, Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports.
Fabio Scaltritti of the Community San Benedetto al Porto in Alessandria commented on the cuts saying: “In Italy a place in an animal shelter costs on average 20 euros with the addition of the cost of cans and biscuits.”
“The new rules imposed by the Salvini decree reduce the cost of receiving a human being to less than 20 euros a day: it means that we are equated with the keepers of a kennel and we do not want to be”, he added.
“It is not an economic question, but an ethical one”, Scaltritti said and noted: “Even if the figure had remained at 35 euros a day we would not have enough.”
Scaltritti claimed that the amounts per migrant per day they charge for drug addicts was 75 euros a day, 130 euros a day for minor migrants, and up to 250 euros for migrants with mental health issues.
Since coming to power as Interior Minister in 2018, Salvini has managed to reduce new illegal migrant arrivals by over 90 percent, which has also seen drownings in the Mediterranean decrease as well.
Not all of those running migrant reception centres have come out against Salvini. Earlier this year, the head of the largest migrant reception facility in Italy Francesco Magnano slammed open borders advocates saying an open border policy had “created slums scattered throughout the country“.
“In our country, there are 600,000 denials. People who have lost not only the right to reception, but have lost their status, they are zombies who live in our country”, he added.
