The emergency ordinance that has been in force since this afternoon around the registration center in Ter Apel will be adjusted again after a few hours. A spokesperson for the Groningen Security Region reports this to the ANP news agency.
The Netherlands Council for Refugees criticized the regulation, which prohibited unregistered asylum seekers from staying around the application centre.
The ban does not apply to people who are already registered or people who have an appointment at the application center to register. But asylum seekers who have just arrived, according to the Council for Refugees, had nowhere to go. They were not allowed to enter the site according to the text of the emergency ordinance, while that is necessary to make an appointment in the center.
“By law, anyone seeking protection must apply for asylum in Ter Apel as soon as possible,” explains a spokeswoman for the Council for Refugees. “How is that possible if they are forbidden to go there?”
The security region says that the regulation is indeed “worded a little too tightly”. The organization is working on a new text, which should make it clear that people who arrive for the first time in Ter Apel can go to the application center to let them know that they are there.
Hundreds of people regularly slept on the grounds in front of the application center in recent weeks. To prevent this, the emergency shelter in Zoutkamp in Northwest Groningen was opened today. There is room for five to seven hundred people.
In the first days about 250 people can go. That number will be expanded in the near future. The first bus arrived around 2.30pm this afternoon with about fifty people on board and around 4pm the second bus arrived with an equally large group of passengers.
“People get a bed, they can store their things in lockers where they get a key. When that’s over, they can go to the dining room to eat and drink and relax for a while. We take it easy it is a gradual process,” explains the COA.
The asylum seekers are brought back from Zoutkamp to Ter Apel on the day they have an appointment there to register. Then they go to another shelter somewhere else in the country.