The Asser Asylum Seekers Center on Schepersmaat for another fifteen years is not really an issue for a council majority. The number of a thousand asylum seekers. And especially under what living conditions. They are now far below the size. The quality of life has to be increased considerably, and that must be forcing with requirements at the COA, otherwise a thousand reception places will be a problem.
Quality of daycare, with improving the living conditions of the AZC residents, go beyond the number of a thousand for most political parties, it turned out tonight. The number of a thousand does not appear to be sacred. Even though the COA wants that.
For example, the VVD believes that the current AZC has already dropped by the lower limit, in terms of liveability. “Certainly if there is cockroaches on the floor.” The VVD questions a thousand asylum seekers, and would rather look for ‘a middle ground’. “On the one hand, we want to do justice to residents, with some lighting of the pressure on the neighborhood. We also want to improve the quality of life in the AZC.”
According to the ChristenUnie you can set quality requirements for the quality of life. “And if the COA does not meet it, you can cancel the management agreement,” says CU councilor Jerke Setz. Former VVD member Bert Homan, recently List Homan, wants to look at the distribution of asylum seekers. He then thinks about six to eight smaller branches in Assen, with thirty to forty people per location.
According to the CDA, COA is willing to improve everything to the building, to ensure better living conditions. “For that, an agreement of fifteen years is needed.” But List Homan does not want to be taken hostage by the COA, if it goes minimal numbers required for good care, or minimal duration. “The COA is a guest in Assen, that does not determine how many are being taken care of, or for how long, and whether it can be finished. We determine that,” says Homan.
Stadspartij Plop believes liveability at the AZC of great importance, with some privacy. “A thousand men may be too much,” says foreman Henk Santing. “If you feel good, you kick a lot less mess. We find the question twice from the Spreading Act for Assen sufficient”, which amounts to more than seven hundred.
GroenLinks and SP also want to better guarantee privacy and living conditions in the AZC. “If that means that you have to go to a smaller number in terms of daycare, then good living conditions outweigh the number of a thousand people.” GroenLinks wants clarity about the requirements that Assen can set.
According to List van Brakel, the building on the Schepersmaat cannot be made for a thousand people ‘easy to live’. She also refers to the earlier unreliability of the COA around the emergency shelter in the Expo hall. For a while nothing was improved for poor living conditions, until a letter letter came from the GGD.
Local residents around the AZC in Assen took the municipality hard on their fingers prior to the council. “Five years, the asylum seekers’ center on Schepersmaat would come, with a possible extension to ten years, that was the agreement,” said local residents. “What is such an appointment worth, if you extend the AZC with another 15 years. The municipality will do everything to come out of the past under that appointment. Then you cannot be trusted,” it sounded reproachful.
Mayor Marco Out contradicted Pertinent, which at the time it was promised that the asylum seekers’ center would leave again after ten years. “That was never said by us as drivers.” Subsequently, a resident with a municipal letter came up, from 2015, which states black-on-white ‘that a management agreement has been concluded for the establishment of an AZC for a minimum of five and a maximum of ten years’.
Another resident pointed to the miserable living conditions in the ‘far too full AZC with a thousand refugees’. The woman did that on behalf of an asylum seeker, a mother who has been living in the AZC for five years with seven family members, in a room of thirty square meters. “Everything has to happen, eating, living, studying, sleeping, playing, that is not possible.”
She mentioned a stressful and unsanitary living and living situation. In addition, cockroaches pass by, poop in the shower room, a lot of noise that means that children cannot sleep or study, lack of facilities such as kitchens, washing machines, special leeway for children, “because in the corridors it is not allowed”, and about the many arguments among residents because so many people are on top of each other. “The AZC Asser is the worst location with the least space,” was the conclusion.
A resident of the Zuiderpark neighborhood does not really find 59 percent ‘broad support’. He also points to an incident in which an asylum seeker with a large meat knife crossed the Europaweg, towards the Wilhelmina Hospital, where the police took him in the collar with pepper spray. “It is an incident, but if the city council concludes that the AZC does not affect the living pleasure, then that makes you think.”
Another local resident pointed out to the increased unrest and the insecurity in the neighborhood around the AZC. In her eyes mainly caused by young asylum seekers on Fatbikes, who tear around life -threatening, where they also film and photograph unauthorized. “And if you say something about it, they react very annoying.”
According to the parties, it must be maintained in the event of a nuisance, whether it is now by AZC residents or by others. “If insecurity is a problem, then there must be more blue on the street,” says Assen Centraal.
The city council will definitely decide on Thursday 19 June on the extension of the AZC in Assen with another fifteen years for a thousand residents, or possibly less.