It was election week and people from Drenthe went to the polls en masse on Wednesday. The turnout was highest in the municipality of De Wolden at 88.1 percent and the lowest in Emmen at only 77.3 percent.
For people who are less mobile, voting can be a challenge. In the municipality of Coevorden they have found a practical solution for this. A mobile polling station that travels to different locations. This way, less mobile residents could also easily cast their vote.
Besides elections, there was more news in Drenthe. The beet campaign has already been underway for a month. A busy period during which the beets are collected from the field, loaded and taken to the factory in Hoogkerk. During the day and at night, drivers drive back and forth with full trucks filled with sugar beets. And that doesn’t always happen without a fight; two beet wagons recently overturned in the north.
On Tuesday it was decided that the opening hours of Groningen Airport Eelde will be extended. Passenger planes are now allowed to use the airport from 6 a.m. to midnight. But that does not mean that more planes will immediately arrive.
A second important decision is that the airport will remain available to Defense in the future. This concerns transport and helicopter flights, not fighter aircraft. The new permit gives Defense more space than the previously agreed three hundred flights per year, but the airport believes that the armed forces will not come close to that in practice.
Drenthe went to the polls en masse on Wednesday. In our province you could vote at 340 locations. Polling stations were set up at a number of special places in Drenthe, such as at the Camp Westerbork Remembrance Center. Here you received a red pencil with a text from Anne Frank written on it.
The dust settled after the elections on Thursday. D66 appears to be the largest, closely followed by PVV. It is the talk of the town on the street.
Moreover, a considerable number of people from Drenthe are traveling to The Hague to take a seat in the House of Representatives for the first time. One of these is deputy Henk Jumelet from Erica, who comes to Parliament for the CDA. Eline Vedder takes the opposite route: the former Member of Parliament takes a seat in the Provincial Council.
A group of Drenthe companies and the University of Groningen will receive a subsidy of 15 million euros to work on a cleaner textile sector. Because this is one of the most polluting sectors in the world.
Over the next four years, the companies involved will work with robots, artificial intelligence and innovations in the field of chemical recycling. The approach is about literally making the sector cleaner, but also about behavioral change.
One of the ways is a robot that selects reusable clothing from brought in garments. He is trained for this with photos.