United Nations Refugee Agency to manage green line meant for refugees from Ukraine

Chisinau, 12 April /MOLDPRES – The United Nations Refugee Agency has taken over the phone line dedicated to the problems of the refugees from Ukraine - 0800 800 11, the government’s communication and protocol department has reported.

Launched on 1 March 2022 and managed by Moldova’s government so far, more exactly by the Single Crisis Management Centre, the green line on the period 1 March - 8 April received more than 10,500 calls from refugees of Ukraine, as well as from Moldova’s citizens who needed information to donate or directly help people who came from the neighbor country.

The civil servants who were daily on guard at phone were in charge of more categories of calls: assets, food products, accommodation, medical services, transport services, legal or consular services. In this way, operators were providing needed information to refugees or were conveying their demand to other colleagues from the Single Crisis Management Centre, in order to solve the problems of Ukrainian citizens.

The green line operators were both employees of the State Chancellery, as well as colleagues from the Academy of Public Administration and the ones from the Public Services Agency. A State Chancellery consultant, Vera Gurievschi, provided information support to refugees both on working days and in the week-end, assuming the duty of coordinator of the green line’s team. Even if the specific character of her daily work changed overnight, Gurievschi said that, on all this period, she was motivated by the fact that, along with other colleagues, she was able to help people in difficult situation.

„I answered each call and we tried to find a solution to each problem. There were various requests. While in the beginning, there were a lot of questions as to transport, subsequently, the number of requests concerning the accommodation increased. When the number of refugees who remained in Moldova dropped and some of them left for the European Union, more requests appeared in terms of nourishment, medical and consular services for refugees, who ruled to remain in Moldova for a while,’’ the civil servant said.

According to operators, there were less usual calls. For instance, refugees asked where they can take materials for manufacturing hand-made things and other people, citizens of Moldova, offered to donate musical instruments, such as a piano.

Vera Gurievschi says that the greatest reward of the work of the green line team was a sincere ‘’thank you’’ from the interlocutor. On average, green line operators of the call centre at the government’s headquarters were daily receiving about 250 calls and the maximal number of calls was 761 per day.

In early April 2022, the UN Refugee Agency set up a new team of the call centre and provided location for it. The Agency also assumed all the spending for the work of the phone line for refugees and Moldovan citizens willing to help them.

Photo: Government