In recent weeks, local residents expressed loud and clear. Ever since the arrival of the AZC to the Schepersmaat in 2016, some of them experienced nuisance from asylum seekers who go through their neighborhood to the Asser inner city. The municipality does not take complaints seriously enough, according to part of the neighborhood.
“We are not surprised by the outcome, but slightly disappointed,” says Roel Jacobs, on behalf of a group of critical local residents. Around twenty of them came to the council meeting last night. They saw the extension of the asylum seekers’ center on eyes.
An important requirement for stopping the nuisance is to shift the walking route from the AZC. The neighborhood wants the municipality to move a sidewalk and a cycle path, creating a shorter connection to the center of the city. “If that walking route is realized, we are actually rid of the nuisance,” says Jacobs.
Alderman Cor Staal (ChristenUnie) is agree with the proposal from the neighborhood. In addition, he wants to look at more measures together with the neighborhood to limit the nuisance, such as more street lighting, new crossings and trash cans.
Taking these measures can be quite smooth in terms of steel. “Those are best things you can talk about is not weird at all. We will just get to work as soon as possible, that will not take years.”
According to Jacobs, the neighborhood is not yet convinced of the words of the alderman and wants to see action first. “They say there is a project group and that they are going to work on the nuisance. But that is something we have hoped for for ten years. It would be nice if it happened now, but we have a hard head in it.”
Distrust towards the municipality of Assen is partly due to a letter that local residents received in 2015. It stated that the AZC would be there for a maximum of ten years. The fifteen -year -old extension feels like a broken promise.
That was incorrectly communicated at the time, Alderman Staal admits. “I can imagine that people have interpreted it that it would have ended below. At the same time, the world has changed and that reception of asylum seekers is still necessary.”
In any case, the municipality does not want to make that error again and so the alderman is clear about the new agreement with the COA: extension of the AZC will also remain a possibility in fifteen years.