Sports hall de Spronk in Vledder will be used as an emergency reception location for asylum seekers from tomorrow afternoon. The municipality of Westerveld wants to relieve the application center in Ter Apel with a hundred places.
The sports hall is currently being set up as a reception location. The hundred asylum seekers are expected to stay in Vledder for a week. “Sports lessons and activities for the coming week have been cancelled. The asylum seekers are expected to leave our municipality on May 27 and the sports hall can be used again for the usual sports activities,” the municipality reports.
In Westerveld, options were already being explored to set up sports halls as shelters in case the influx of refugees would increase significantly. Mayor Rikus Jager: “As a municipality, we are happy to lend a helping hand when the need is high. It is important for municipalities to work together to prevent harrowing situations such as last week.”
In recent months, the application center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel has been struggling with a shortage of reception places. The influx of new asylum seekers is so great that there are not enough places to sleep. People recently spent the night on the lawn near the center, and the next night about fifty asylum seekers will have to spend the night on a chair in the waiting area of the application center, the COA reports.
Yesterday, the municipality of Emmen announced that it would set up a sports hall to take over a maximum of one hundred asylum seekers from Ter Apel. Despite this help, ‘Ter Apel’ remains so full that not everyone has a place to sleep.