Czech consular offices in Ukraine flooded by repatriation seekers
Kyiv, Sept 17 (CTK) – Clerks from the foreign and interior ministries are temporarily working at Czech consular offices in Ukraine that are flooded by hundreds of repatriation applications from ethnic Czechs who have been living in Ukraine, Czech Ambassador in Kyiv Ivan Pocuch told CTK yesterday.
Without this administrative help, all the repatriation applications would have been proceeded as late as next May, Pocuch said.
The consular offices will be reinforced this and next week.
The repatriation applications are submitted to the consular offices in Kyiv and Lviv. The Foreign Ministry must check an application within 90 days and the Interior Ministry must deal with it in 180 days.
Given the high number of repatriation seekers, the consular offices are trying to make the processing of the applications as short as possible, Pocuch said.
Boris Iljuk, head of the Council of Chernobyl Compatriots of the Association of Volhynian Czechs, told CTK yesterday that the deadlines for the processing of the applications are excessively long.
“The expatriates from the East are being forgotten in the current refugee crisis,” said Iljuk, a teacher at the University of Ostrava in northern Moravia.
He said the Czech doors should remain open for the expatriates from Ukraine.
Iljuk said some 3000 to 4000 people have applied for repatriation. Pocuch said hundreds of applications have been submitted to the consular offices.
Czech President Milos Zeman said earlier yesterday the refugees from Ukraine should be included in the number of the migrants who are to be voluntarily redistributed across Europe.
Last autumn, Zeman voiced his deep dissatisfaction with the work of the Czech Embassy in Kyiv. He accused the embassy of having a bad relation to the Volhynian Czechs. Czech media speculated that Zeman called for Pocuch’s dismissal but that Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek backed Pocuch.
According to earlier data of the Interior Ministry, 414 people from Ukraine submitted repatriation applications and 151 of them have come to the Czech Republic. Daily Pravo wrote earlier this month that the number of applications exceeded 1100 during the summer.