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.
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