Utrecht helps to relieve pressure on Ter Apel: 100 asylum seekers temporarily welcome in this sports hall | NOW

The municipality of Utrecht will receive a hundred asylum seekers next month in the Hoograven sports hall and the adjacent sports canteen. It concerns emergency emergency shelter with which Utrecht wants to help temporarily relieve the enormous pressure on the application center in Ter Apel.

The sports hall will be made available for one month. Men, women and families are accommodated. It concerns refugees who are waiting to start their asylum procedure in Ter Apel. The sports hall must be available again from 1 August for the regular sports season.

The various security regions have received an urgent request from the cabinet to set up two hundred crisis emergency shelters each for asylum seekers who are currently staying at the central registration location of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA). There are distressing situations in which, in the words of the Utrecht city council, the reception of refugees has ‘below the humane limit’.

As a human rights city, Utrecht considers it its moral duty to provide temporary shelter for these refugees. These are not Ukrainian refugees, they are being received elsewhere in the city. Local residents are invited to an information meeting on Monday evening.

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