The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) and the Groningen security region have Friday evening four hundred asylum seekers from the overcrowded application center in Ter Apel to other reception locations in the Netherlands. Earlier in the evening, the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) called for “immediate intervention” because of the very bad hygiene around the registration center, where hundreds of people have been sleeping outside in the open air for weeks. According to the Inspectorate, there is “a great risk” of an outbreak of infectious diseases “as a result of the total lack of hygiene in the field”.
There are too few toilets, showers and asylum seekers waiting there have too little access to clean water. This has potential consequences for public health: “not only for the people who are there to submit an asylum application, but also for everyone who works or lives there”. The Inspectorate also warned that the outbreak and spread of diseases should also be taken into account when moving asylum seekers to other reception locations. Whether that actually happened is not clear.
According to the NOS are the asylum seekers Friday evening to Utrecht, Almere, Groningen and the Groningen towns of Stadskanaal and Zuidbroek. ANP news agency reports that “dozens” of people stayed behind around the application center on Friday evening. According to a spokesperson for the relief organization Vluchtelingenwerk, about fifty to eighty people were involved – they would have been afraid to get on a bus and feared that their asylum application would be delayed.
asylum crisis
The Dutch asylum system is at a standstill and that is most visible in Ter Apel, where every asylum seeker has to go upon arrival in the Netherlands. The application center has been overcrowded for months and asylum seekers were initially forced to sleep on chairs and later also in the open air. The crisis reached a low point this week, when twice in a row more than 700 people slept outside, on the floor.
The cabinet announced a new asylum agreement on Friday evening, for which it will allocate hundreds of millions in the coming years. The agreement states, among other things, that municipalities must have at least twenty thousand new homes ready by this autumn and that the Netherlands will temporarily stop the so-called Turkey deal, which distributes asylum seekers from Turkish refugee camps across Europe. As a result, 1,250 fewer asylum seekers will come to the Netherlands next year. The agreement was reached in consultation between the cabinet, the Association of Dutch Municipalities, the Security Council and the provinces.
Also read: Despair is growing in Ter Apel: ‘Go back. Waiting here makes no sense’