3,707 minors disappeared from migrant centres - update 2

(ANSA) - Palermo, January 13 - As of December 31 last year, 3,707 unaccompanied minors have gone missing from migrant reception centres out of a total of 14,243 registered, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told a hearing of the Sicilian Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Commission on Tuesday. In Sicily alone 1,882 out of a total of 4,628 unaccompanied foreign minors disappeared from migrant reception centers. "We have set up a task force at the ministry, because the issue of minors has security implications," Alfano said.
    "We don't want them getting sucked into the criminal world, beginning with prostitution".
    The Migrantes Foundation, a Catholic migrant rights association, denounced what it said are "extremely serious shortcomings in the protection of unaccompanied minors" once they reach Italian shores.
    Italy has been the first landfall for thousands of people crossing the Mediterranean on often unsafe boats run by unscrupulous human traffickers in a bid to flee war, dictatorships and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, many of them dying along the way.