The municipality of Haarlem receives seventy asylum seekers from the application center in Ter Apel. The reception is for at least a week and takes place in the Beijneshal, a sports hall that was actually set up to offer Ukrainian refugees shelter. According to the municipality, it has been used ‘only to a limited extent’.
Mayor Jos Wienen of Haarlem indicates that ‘a bed in a sports hall’ is not the ideal way to receive people. But because the application center in Ter Apel is overcrowded, he has offered the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) to temporarily use the sports hall.
After a week in the Haarlem sports hall, it will be examined whether the asylum seekers can move on to another reception location. If that is not an option, they can stay another week, the municipality said. To relieve Ter Apel, several municipalities in Drenthe offered help last week. In total, hundreds of asylum seekers could go to sports halls in Emmen, Vledder and Tweede Exloërmond.