By 30 June of this year, 153 consultations had been provided as a whole in Riga and four regions – Kurzeme, Zemgale, Vidzeme, and Latgale. TOP-5 of the states the citizens of which most often applied for help are Ukraine, Russia, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
To ensure mutual communication between the service providers and the third-country citizens, including asylum seekers, refugees and persons with an alternative status, the interpreting service, available within ICI, in the languages that are rare in Latvia was used by Latvian Red Cross, State Employment Agency, medical and local government institutions, and clients themselves. The most popular languages for which interpreters were needed most often were: Arabic, Kurdish, and Dari.
The society`s specialists say that in ICI there are 11 interpreters, who can interpret in Arabic, Pashto, Dari, Farsi, Turkish, Kurdish, Urdu, Tigrinya, Hindi, Chinese, and French.
The long-term coordination system to support immigrants at the national level has existed in Latvia within the Information Centre for Immigrants project already since 18 May 2016. ICI operates as a one-stop agency, providing the information and support to the third-country citizens, giving professional support to service providers in all the local governments of Latvia, co-ordinates the research and availability of the services for various groups of immigrants.
The project is implemented by the society "Shelter "Safe House"" within the framework of the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund. The project is co-financed by the European Union. The budget of the project is EUR 939,944.15 of which EUR 704,995.61 is co-financed by the European Union and EUR 234,998.54 — by the state budget. ~43% of the project financing is allocated for providing interpreting services. Grant Agreement No.PMIF/12/2016/1/1.
*A third-country national is any person who is not a citizen of the member states of the European Union, the European Economic Area or the Swiss Confederation.
Information was prepared by: Rasa Salina (Rasa Saliņa), Communications and Social Media Expert, phone: 22026355, e-mail: rasa.salina@gmail.com