I am outraged (yet again) at the spending priorities of this government. While the UK is spending £22m to prevent a relatively small number of desperate people from seeking asylum in the UK (Calais crisis: British police to be deployed to target people-smuggling, 20 August), I am on Agathonisi, an idyllic Dodecanese island 10 miles off the Turkish coast, with a population of 180, which is hosting hundreds of refugees. While the big islands, Kos and Lesbos, get all the attention, the plight of the small islands is ignored.
Every day hundreds of refugees, mostly Syrian, arrive on the shores of the island. The islanders are sympathetic to their plight and give them food, drink and clothing, but there are no facilities to provide for such large numbers.
The island has one coastguard and two assistants, who are trained only to register the arrival and departure of ferries. All they can do is blow their whistles to keep refugees off the main town beach. There are no public toilet facilities, so not surprisingly the refugees have to relieve themselves where they can.
The island’s doctor (actually a midwife) left last month so there is nobody to deal with health checks or any medical problems. In the heat of a blazing sun, the refugees find any piece of shade they can to shelter, dry out their clothes on any fence they can find and have to sleep out on the beach, on the quay or in the street. Tourists are scared off, so the major source of income of the island has collapsed. The ferries to Samos cannot accommodate all the refugees so some are waiting for days to leave the island. Last month they made a fire by Poros beach, which sparked off a forest fire that took the fire engine and water planes from Samos four hours to extinguish. The local residents are desperate, with absolutely no help from outside. Just a tiny part of that £22m could provide them with field toilets and specialist help to deal with the problem.
Professor emeritus Simon Clarke
Coventry
