SHENGJIN: Albanian port chief Sander Marashi is used to handling the scrap metal cargo of more than a thousand migrants who will soon be sent from Italy to process their asylum applications outside the EU.
The port of Shengjin is key to a controversial deal between the Adriatic neighbors under which Albania will accept migrants fished from the seas off Italy.
After being registered by Italian officials at a port in northern Albania, the asylum seekers will be held in a Rome-run camp at a former Albanian military base in nearby Gjader.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni said the first migrants should arrive at the port on August 1.
But with housing for asylum seekers – which Italy was supposed to build – far from complete, that deadline is set to be missed.
Still, Marashi, a former army officer, insisted Shengjin – the country’s third-largest port – was ready to receive the migrants.
“The work here has been completed for about 20 days. The center is ready to welcome immigrants,” Marashi told AFP.
In Gjader – where AFP saw only a few housing units assembled – “work continues at an accelerated pace”.
Italy is in charge of security inside the centers with Albanian police in charge outside and “during the transport of migrants from one zone to another,” said Taulant Balla, who was Albania’s interior minister until last month.
This would involve working closely with the Italian authorities, who now had much of the port officially under Rome’s jurisdiction.
“We will help them if they need reinforcements,” Marashi told AFP, his desk cluttered with papers.
He said the port is ready to manage the risks.
“There may be escape attempts. But if that happens, we have procedures planned,” he added.
“Security will of course be increased outside the port as well. We will carry out strict checks on all vehicles and all persons to prevent access by people who would want to exploit these men.”
Albania has been experiencing the other side of the migration equation for years.
After the fall of its hard-line communist government in the early 1990s and the chaos that followed, hundreds of thousands fled the country for a better life abroad.
“Emigration is the bane of society. Nobody wants to leave their country for pleasure,” Marashi said.
The port boss, who watched his daughter move abroad and resettle with her family in England, said he knows this from personal experience.
“Since 1990, many Albanians have left the country – most to Italy,” he told AFP, recalling chaotic scenes of desperate people climbing onto cargo ships and boats.
“I was 21 at the time and I can still see them,” he said.
It was this collective memory, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said, that prompted the country to repay Italy’s hospitality at the time by now agreeing to an asylum deal with Rome.
However, the deal has been widely criticized by human rights groups, who say the deal undermines international law.
In preparation, his staff were trained by the police and intelligence services “to handle potential security issues”. However, rights groups were not part of this training.
