The Groningen municipality of Stadskanaal will once again receive asylum seekers for one night who were waiting outside the overcrowded registration center in Ter Apel on Friday. The municipality says that this concerns approximately eighty people.
On Friday morning, a spokesperson for the Red Cross expressed the hope that something would be arranged before the end of the afternoon. “There must be a solution that lasts longer than one night before the long Pentecost weekend starts.” The organization acknowledged at the beginning of the evening that a solution was not yet in sight.
Still, two buses arrived around 11 p.m. to pick up asylum seekers. The Red Cross has eighty beds ready at the location. About ten people voluntarily stayed behind at Ter Apel.
Stadskanaal also opened an emergency shelter on Wednesday evening. Then about fifty asylum seekers went there. The municipality then emphasized that it would only be for one night. On Thursday, the Drenthe municipality of Aa en Hunze helped by making a sports hall available in Gieten where 130 asylum seekers could sleep.
Stadskanaal announces that it has arranged night shelter again at the ‘urgent request’ of asylum minister Bart van den Brink. The municipality said it did this because groups of people who sleep outside pose a risk ‘to public order and safety in Ter Apel and to our region’.
“This time the agreement is that it is really the last time: other solutions will be available from tomorrow,” the municipality said.
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