Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited the application center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel on Wednesday evening. According to Rutte, it is ‘painfully visible that the asylum reception in the Netherlands is overcrowded’.
The Prime Minister tweeted that. He writes that he has had ‘impressive conversations’ with both people who are received in Ter Apel and employees of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA). “We are working incredibly hard to accommodate everyone.”
The application center has been bursting at the seams for weeks. There have been several days where there was no place for sometimes hundreds of people. In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, another hundred asylum seekers had to spend the night on chairs in the waiting room of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND).
An untenable situation, says mayor Jaap Velema of Westerwolde, which Ter Apel falls under, for some time now. State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum) also looks at the overcrowded center with sorrow. On Tuesday he announced that agreements have been made for crisis relief from 1 June.
At toerbuurt, four security regions will be responsible for the reception of six hundred people for two weeks. This emergency measure is intended to prevent asylum seekers from having to sleep in chairs in the corridor of the application center in Ter Apel for the next three months.
In addition to his visit to Ter Apel, Mark Rutte also visited the Groningen Mining Damage Institute (IMG) and spoke with Groningen victims of the earthquakes.