Dutch PM "ashamed" of asylum failings as MSF steps in

By Piroschka van de Wouw

TERAPEL, Netherlands -Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday stated he was “ashamed” of issues on the nation’s centre for processing asylum requests as humanitarian group Medecins sans Frontieres despatched in a group to help with migrants’ medical wants.

His authorities introduced a collection of measures supposed to handle the issues on the Ter Apel centre, the place a whole bunch of asylum seekers have been sleeping tough in current weeks.

However Rutte stated at a information convention the issues have been “not one thing that may be solved in a couple of weeks or months”.

It was the primary time that MSF, also called Docs With out Borders and principally lively in poor creating nations, has labored within the Netherlands, a rich European Union state, the MSF emergency coordinator on the shelter stated.

“The asylum-seekers right here stay in dismal, primitive circumstances,” Monique Nagelkerke stated.

Rutte stated a 2015 determination to scale back asylum capability and a nationwide housing scarcity have been aggravating the issue.

“I believe that everybody within the Netherlands thinks it’s horrible that MSF feels obliged to leap in at Ter Apel,” he advised reporters.

His cupboard on Friday introduced measures to fulfill a Sept. 10 deadline to have new arrivals on the centre sheltered, together with enlisting the assistance of the Defence Ministry to open a second registration location on a army base.

It additionally stated it could take non permanent measures to limit the “influx” of migrants, together with halting accepting 1,000 asylum seekers yearly as agreed underneath a 2016 European Union cope with Turkey. It's going to additionally halt visas for relations of people that should not have housing within the Netherlands.

The arrival of MSF adopted the loss of life of a 3-month-old child on the Ter Apel shelter this week, which drew worldwide concern.

The child died of unknown causes in a sports activities gymnasium getting used as a makeshift shelter for newcomers on the shelter with nowhere else to sleep, based on Leon Veldt, spokesman for the Dutch Central Company for the Reception of Asylum Seekers.

“We're caught, we don’t know the place to go,” stated Motaz Mohammed, 25, who got here from Yemen and has been sleeping exterior the centre for 11 days, via each a heat-wave and thunderstorms.

“Nobody desires to speak to us, solely the guards, and the guards inform us: ‘Sorry, wait’.”