As of Saturday afternoon, asylum seekers who have yet to register will be prohibited from staying in the area around the application center in Ter Apel. That reports the Groningen security region. The chairman of the Security Region, Koen Schuiling, has announced an emergency ordinance to, among other things, prevent people from sleeping outside again in Ter Apel. In the night from Thursday to Friday, about three hundred asylum seekers slept outside.
The transfer location in Zoutkamp will be in use from Saturday. On arrival in Ter Apel, asylum seekers receive a number with a date for an appointment for their registration, after which they are transferred by bus to Zoutkamp. The ticket system for this should go into effect soon. When the registration of asylum seekers in the application center has been completed, they go to another reception location. For example in the municipality of Goes, where space is being made for four hundred extra asylum seekers. According to State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum, VVD), asylum seekers in Ter Apel no longer have to sleep outside.
According to a spokesperson for the Security Region, the emergency ordinance has been announced so that the police have an instrument to act if asylum seekers do not want to leave the site of the application center. This sometimes happens because they don’t trust the system or are afraid it will not be their turn to register. According to the security region, if people in Ter Apel continue to sleep outside, the social safety, general safety, hygiene and health of the asylum seekers, employees on the site and the inhabitants of Ter Apel will be “seriously at risk”. The emergency ordinance should help prevent this.