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Netherlands to provide extra housing and shelter for refugees

Xinhua, November 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Dutch government, municipalities and provinces on Friday reached an agreement on the reception and accommodation of refugees with extra housing and emergency shelter capacity.

The deal is the final result of the previous meeting in October in which the three parties already agreed a common approach to handle the influx of refugees.

The Dutch municipalities will quickly provide simple, temporary houses for 14,000 asylum seekers with a residence permit. At a later stage housing for another 10,000 refugees with a residence permit will be arranged. In total about 3,500 new homes for at least four people per house should be made available.

The three parties hope the measures will lead to a better flow of migrants. At the moment asylum seekers with a residence permit often stay too long in the reception centers, because there are not enough homes available, and therefore they block the arrival of newcomers.

To ensure that new asylum seekers can be offered a bed in the forthcoming period by the end of 2015, a total of 500 extra emergency shelter places will be erected for a period of 3-6 months in each of the 25 Dutch security regions.

Furthermore the three parties emphasized the need for 2,500 extra semi-emergency shelter places per province where asylum seekers can stay for longer than a year. Plans for this should be ready by Feb. 1, 2016.

In total, 47,574 asylum seekers were registered at the reception centers as of November 23, almost double the number of 2014 (24,929). The government declared the total influx of asylum seekers for this year and next year could be 58,000.

To pay for the reception of refugees, the government spends an extra 350 million euros (370 million U.S. dollars) this year, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said on Friday. Next year the extra budget is 400 million euros.

"Due to the high influx, we have to release more money for the reception of refugees," Dijsselbloem said. "Fortunately, we can integrate this in our budget plan. It is important that we have made good agreements with the municipalities on the way forward." Enditem