In the coming weeks, municipalities will arrange hundreds of additional shelters for people who have fled Ukraine. Five hundred places should be made available immediately, with another thousand places available on October 1. The reception locations are filling up quickly, just like the central reception points in Amsterdam and Utrecht, the Safety Council reported on Friday after a scheduled meeting.
Just over 98,000 Ukrainian refugees are now registered in the Netherlands. Emergency shelters have more than 81,000 beds available, of which more than 80,000 are in use.
The 25 safety regions in the Netherlands have been asked to increase the number of shelter places to 90,000 in the coming weeks, and then to 97,000. “We are already working extremely hard to achieve the required number of places, but if it is necessary, and it is, we will do our utmost to achieve even more,” says Wouter Kolff, chairman of the Safety Council and mayor of Dordrecht. .
According to Kolff, Ukrainians like to come to the Netherlands. “The combination of living allowance, opportunity to work and free childcare makes us a more attractive country to come to than other European countries.”