Today at 10:50 • Updated today at 11:12
The first asylum seekers arrived at the Breepark event hall in Breda on Wednesday afternoon. The hall has been converted into emergency shelter for five hundred people, who can stay there in April, July and August. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) expects that all five hundred beds will be filled by Friday.
The shelter is a temporary solution because various locations for asylum seekers in the Netherlands are overcrowded. For this reason, some places are forced to remain open longer than planned, and the number of asylum seekers at existing locations is often much higher than permitted. That is why COA is urgently looking for new places.
The asylum seekers who come to live in the emergency shelter come from different municipalities. “Many of them come from Biddinghuizen (ed. in Flevoland),” says a spokesperson for the COA. For the fourth time during the winter months, a reception location for 1,200 people was built on the event site. They must be gone by the beginning of this month, because the site must be ready for the festival season by the end of April.
The spokesperson continues: “We have no influence on where people come from. At the moment it is so busy everywhere that Breda is relieving the burden on other municipalities.”
A short-term solution
A temporary place to accommodate people was sought at short notice. According to the municipality, this is a simple shelter. There are two bunk beds together in the hall. The back is closed and there is a curtain at the front, says the COA spokesperson. All residents share the sanitary facilities. There is also a communal recreation room and 24-hour guidance and security.
The shelter is open throughout the month of April, after which it closes for two months. This has to do with events in the summer, which means that the location in Breda is not available for the COA. So in a month’s time people will have to leave again. COA does not yet know where they will go.
‘Anything is better than having to sleep outside’
Men, women and families with children aged 12 and over live in the shelter. “It is not the ideal situation,” the COA spokesperson emphasizes. “In the longer term, we are working towards places where people get more rest and can be in one place for longer. Then they can get used to it and really ‘participate’ in the municipalities. In the short term, that is not feasible. But anything is better than having to sleep outside.”
