Housing project for refugees, displaced launched in Pancevo

PANCEVO - The head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Michael Davenport, the Serbian Commissioner for Refugees and Migrations Vladimir Cucic and Pancevo mayor Pavle Radanov on Wednesday visited the collective refugee centre in the city and a site where social housing units will be built for refugees and displaced persons.

After the visit, the officials signed a memorandum of understanding and cooperation in providing housing to refugees and internally displaced persons who now live at the collective centre in Pancevo, near Belgrade.

The signing ceremony marked the launch of a project that is part of an EU-funded refugee programme whose beneficiaries are the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees and Migrations and the government Office for Kosovo-Metohija.

The project is fully in line with the state policy towards refugees, internally displaced persons and returnees, and fully reflects the principle of providing support for integration of those who have chosen to stay in Serbia, as well as to those who have decided to return to Kosovo, Davenport said at the ceremony.

A plan to close 323 collective centres in Serbia, which were home to a total of 23,000 people at the time, was launched in 2003, the EU ambassador said.

Fourteen such centres remain in Serbia not including Kosovo, he said, voicing hope that the EU programme will make it possible to close them, too.

Commissioner Cucic called on the Pancevo mayor to make it possible for refugee families that will be given housing units to purchase them, which he said would be an example that other Serbian cities could follow.

Over the next two years, the programme will include 15 housing projects for refugees and displaced persons, to be funded by an EU...