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Roundup: Main Austrian asylum seeker processing centre to stop intake due to overcrowding

Xinhua, July 30, 2015 Adjust font size:

Austria's largest facility for the initial housing and processing of asylum seekers, the Traiskirchen refugee camp, is to freeze its intake of asylum seekers next week due to overcrowding, Kurier newspaper reported Wednesday.

The Ministry of the Interior said the facility is filled to overflowing, its 1,800 person official capacity blowing out to 4,500 persons, with hundreds of persons sleeping out in the open.

The Ministry has thus been forced to seek emergency shelter. Under an agreement the state governments were to assist in providing additional accommodation by the end of the month, though as this ends Friday it appears no great relief will be seen.

The news has come under criticism from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the head of its Austrian branch Christoph Pinter calling the situation "intolerable, dangerous, and inhumane" following a visit to the Traiskirchen facility, and said immediate measures must be taken to ensure all refugees have a roof to sleep under.

He said globally the current high numbers of asylum seekers will likely remain steady, and called for a task force to come up with medium and long-term solutions.

Politically the issue has also been subject to heated debate within Austria. Minister of the Interior Johanna Mikl-Leitner threatened to cease the Traiskirchen facility's functionality as an initial contact point for refugees should the state governments not come up with adequate proposals for solutions by the July deadline, while one state governor called for inspections of the Traiskirchen facility for fear of spread of diseases and epidemics.

As the official refugee processing facilities of the states are also at capacity, the Interior Ministry has acknowledged the federal government must provide more resources and that it is working on providing more emergency shelters, though has not yet revealed further details. Endit