Helsingin Sanomat reported that the Finnish Border Guard estimates that the trafficking of people into Finland has increased steadily over the past few years. The article quotes crime prevention head at the agency, Kari Kettunen told the paper that the lion’s share of asylum seekers arrive to the country legally, but some have resorted to organized, criminal means.
Kettunen said his agency estimates this year that nearly one hundred people have entered the country illegally and some 15 people are suspected of aggravated illegal entry. Last year that figure was at about 80 people, he told the paper.
The increase of refugees in Europe looking for a place to settle, Kettunen says, has increased the problem, saying that the organised transit to Finland usually happens via another country in the Schengen Area.
The laws regarding human trafficking in Finland largely depend on the underlying situations of the people involved. It is illegal to help someone across the border that doesn’t have the right travel documents. However, courts have the final say, and determine whether extenuating humanitarian circumstances are involved, the paper wrote. The article features a graph showing the steady rise in illegal entries into the country since 2011.
"Not enough food, time to eat at school"
According to a survey conducted by Fazer, youngsters at school appear to be happy with the quality of school lunches, Swedish-language daily Hufvudstadsbladet reports. However, out of the one thousand students from across the country surveyed, only 51 percent said that they thought there was enough food to go around. Another issue the survey uncovered at school lunches was that just 41 percent said they felt they had enough time to eat, the paper wrote.
“The queuing in the cafeteria easily takes up the lion’s share of the student’s allotted time for lunch,” Tuija Wikström of Evidens, the company that carried out the survey told the paper. “Long queues make the lunch break restless and unpleasant.”
In response to the results, the National Board of Education’s Marjaana Manninen told the paper that she didn’t think that students need to leave the cafeteria hungry.
“It could be that they say there isn’t enough food, because they mainly focus on the main course,” she told the paper. “But the meal should not only consist of meatballs; potatoes, salad, milk, sometimes bread and dessert are also part of it.”
Overall, students gave school lunches a grade of 7,43 out of 10, HBL wrote.
"200 metre long" bread queue
The online version of evening tabloid Iltasanomat features a video clip about a large church-organised bread queue in the eastern Helsinki district of Myllypuro.
The video featured a queue of 605 people along a Myllypuro sidewalk, waiting for their donated bags of groceries like bread, dairy and other staples.
Volunteer Sinikka Backman told the paper that the queue is normally 600 to 850 people long. On Wednesday, IS reported the line was about 200 metres long.
One of the people standing in line "sent a message" to the government against making cuts in the social sector that would affect young families and the elderly, the paper wrote.