Budapest Offers to Help Ukrainian Refugees

From this Friday, refugees from Ukraine will be able to travel free of charge on public transport in the Budapest, and from Monday the municipality will set up an information center in the Nyugati Square underpass, the Mayor of Budapest announced at a press conference in Budapest on Thursday.

Gergely Karácsony is quoted by the state news agency MTI as saying that refugees will have to prove that they are Ukrainian citizens in order to be granted free travel temporarily until April 15. He said that unfortunately, refugees from Ukraine who are Hungarian citizens cannot be granted this possibility for the time being, as they cannot obtain refugee status, but they hope that the government will remedy this problem as soon as possible.

In response to a question from MTI, the mayor said that the possibility of free travel for under-14s naturally also applies to refugees arriving as Hungarian citizens.

The mayor also announced that the municipality of the capital will set up an "information center" open 24 hours a day in the Nyugati Square underpass on Monday.

The municipality of the capital is currently providing for more than 200 refugees from its own budget, but they are constantly consulting with the districts and are striving to increase the number of places, Gergely Karácsony said.

He also stressed that they are particularly concerned about the Hungarian people in Transcarpathia, and thus, they will provide HUF 20 million in emergency aid to Berehovo as requested by that town, and will send technical equipment and durable foodstuffs there.

Gergely Karácsony also said that, based on his experience in recent days, "the state has been slow to react to the situation" and that communication between the capital's municipality and the disaster management service, which coordinates state tasks, is stalled. Despite this, they are cooperating with the government in every way, for example, the local defense committee asked the city on Thursday for 20 buses, which are of course being provided, he pointed out.