An arrested international drug trafficker, poverty in the Veenkoloniën and a new member of parliament from Drenthe. Enough happened in Drenthe last week. In De Week van Drenthe you will get an overview of the most important news.
The man who was arrested last Monday in a major international drug investigation is a 40-year-old resident of Emmen. A 25-year-old man from the same place has also been arrested. According to the police, cocaine was mainly traded and the suspects are involved in several large transports, mainly from South America. The drugs were then distributed via the Netherlands to other parts of Europe.
The plans to combat long-term poverty in the Veenkoloniën are not or hardly working. That’s what researchers from the University of Groningen said last Tuesday, after years of research into so-called hereditary poverty. According to those researchers, you should focus on families and how they pass on poverty from generation to generation. Something like this has to be done with fewer aid organizations and fewer rules, they say.
Shortly after the departure of CDA MP Agnes Mulder from Assen, parliament has another Drent. On Wednesday, Eline Vedder was sworn in as a CDA MP. She succeeds Jaco Geurts, who will become acting mayor of Maasdriel. Vedder was in Provincial Council until this week. The brand new Member of Parliament runs a dairy farm with her husband and was previously a board member at LTO Nederland.
The final exams started last Thursday. There are concerns among students, student organization LAKS and teachers. There are no more corona relaxations this year for the first time. “From December, we received signals from students that they feel unprepared because of the corona pandemic, which resulted in a lot of lesson cancellations,” says board member Rafke Hagenaars of LAKS. There are also concerns at RSG Stad and Esch in Diever, because, according to a teacher, students have mainly suffered a social blow from the corona period.
On Friday it was announced that the number of suicides in Drenthe has increased by a quarter last year. In our province, 60 people took their own lives prematurely, compared to 49 a year earlier. Aid organizations therefore continue to draw attention to this. In Drenthe, for example, there are so-called talking banks in all kinds of places, where you are invited to talk to each other about how you are really doing.