The cabinet has decided to ignore any objections by the municipality of Tubbergen against the reception of asylum seekers in a hotel in Albergen. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) will receive a permit to accommodate up to three hundred asylum seekers in the hotel. Hundreds of angry people have gathered there tonight.
According to Tubantia it is a protest action against the placement of asylum seekers in the hotel in Albergen. For example, a protest sign with the text ‘Albergen says no to AZC!’ attached to the facade of the hotel. Fire arrows were fired earlier in the evening. Newspaper reporters who are on site call the atmosphere ‘comfortable’.
Last week, the cabinet announced that it can adjust the zoning of buildings that can function as asylum seekers’ centers if a municipality continues to refuse. “And the cabinet is now taking that step,” writes State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum) in a letter to the House of Representatives. It is the first time that the government has made such a decision.
Van der Burg writes that the cabinet, together with COA, municipalities and security regions, has investigated the possibilities of being able to receive asylum seekers in the short term. That has not yet led to a breakthrough.
The COA has bought the hotel in the Overijssel village of about 3,600 inhabitants. It can currently receive eighty guests, reports Van der Burg.
“The need is very high”, Van der Burg explains the decision. “Without measures, we will be short of thousands of shelters in October.” The COA has been struggling for months to receive asylum seekers in the application center and to guide them to asylum seekers centers.
In order to be able to receive asylum seekers in the hotel, the zoning plan must be adjusted. According to Van der Burg, COA is working on an application for this.
Asylum seekers have to sleep outside in Ter Apel
Ter Apel application center regularly does not have enough space for new asylum seekers. In recent days, about two hundred people had to sleep outside, because the COA could not offer them a place to sleep elsewhere. The problem lies with the flow of asylum seekers.
The COA gave up the search for places to sleep on Saturday. The organization responsible for the reception and guidance of asylum seekers in the Netherlands said it would continue the search on Sunday.
Several older, female and minor asylum seekers also had to sleep outside at the application center in Ter Apel during the night from Saturday to Sunday. The cabinet made agreements with the security regions about additional reception locations in the hope of unburdening the application center in Ter Apel. But on Tuesday it turned out that two thirds of the regions did not realize the promised shelter places.
Two thousand waiting asylum seekers will be registered at an accelerated rate from Tuesday. This takes place in Budel in Brabant and not in the application center in Ter Apel, in order to relieve the pressure on the application center in the province of Groningen.