Over 850,000 refugees will receive special debit cards by August financed by the European Union and implemented by the Turkish Red Crescent, according to European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) in Turkey.
\nSpeaking to Anadolu Agency on Saturday, ECHO head Jane Lewis said the target was to access over a million refugees by September.
\n\u201cAs of this month, over 850,000 refugees under temporary international protection will be receiving the card and receiving the monthly transfer,\u201d Lewis said.
\n\u201cWe hope that by September, we\u2019ll have a million people under the program,\u201d Lewis said.
\n\u201cHowever, the actual target is 1.314 million, depending on who is eligible to receive the card.\u201d
\nLewis also said the monthly transfer for each refugee, staying out of the refugee camps and registered by the regional migration office directorate, had increased from 100 Turkish liras to 120 Turkish liras per month.
\nWorking with Turkish and United Nations officials, the EU Humanitarian Aid Commission launched the program to curb migrant flows to the bloc and help Turkey\u2019s nearly 3 million refugees, most of whom are Syrians.
\nTurkey hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country in the world. The country has spent around $25 billion helping and sheltering refugees since the beginning of the Syrian civil war.
\nThe debit cards let refugees shop at merchants with Turkish Halkbank debit card machines and withdraw money from ATMs.
\nSyria has been locked in a devastating civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
\nSince then, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed and millions more displaced by the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over 850,000 refugees will receive special debit cards by August financed by the European Union and implemented by the Turkish Red Crescent, according to European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) in Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c59-islamic-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n