Refugees from Donetsk and Luhansk regions seek refuge at Odessa resorts

World June 19, 2014, 14:36

By the present day the Odessa region had accommodated around 2,000 families and orphans who have been seeking refuge from the war horrors in the east of Ukraine

ODESSA, June 19. /ITAR-TASS/. Odessa health resorts on the Black Sea coast, which had scarce visitors until now, have been giving shelter to refugees from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

By the present day the Odessa region had accommodated around 2,000 families and orphans who have been seeking refuge from the war horrors in the east of Ukraine, journalists were told by a source from the refugee accommodation headquarters, set up on the instructions of Odessa regional governor Igor Palitsa.

WWII veterans, people who took part in the clean-up after the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and incapacitated people have been accommodated at health resorts which have the necessary facilities for medical treatment.

"We have to accommodate all the refugees who escaped from the war zone in the east of Ukraine; almost no vacant rooms have been left in the sanatoriums in Odessa and in the Odessa region," said Chief of the regional social welfare department Irina Markevich.

Many refugees who have a high professional qualification have been applying for jobs, but vacancies are available only in the trade sector, said regional employment department chief Tatyana Kanava. The Odessa labor market, which is rather limited, cannot satisfy so many job applicants, she said.

"We have been receiving telephone calls from home, with the callers saying that several more plants, residential blocks or other buildings had been bombarded. It is horrible to realize that when we come back we might see no house where we lived," journalists were told by Sergei Babakov a refugee from Kramatorsk.

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