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Stockholm governor calls for fewer refugees settling in city

Xinhua, September 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

The governor of Sweden's capital, Stockholm, has urged the Swedish government to allow fewer asylum seekers to settle in the city in 2017, citing a lack of housing and difficulties in integration, local media reported on Thursday.

Chris Heister, a conservative Moderate Party politician and leader of the opposition in the Stockholm County Council, wrote an open letter to Sweden's Minister for Employment and Integration Ylva Johansson, in which she said the government should take into account the housing crisis before deciding how many refugees the city's municipalities should take responsibility for next year.

The number of newly arrived asylum seekers settling in the Stockholm region doubled in 2016, compared to the previous year. This year, a third of all new arrivals in Sweden were allocated to municipalities across Stockholm. The figure is predicted to be even higher in 2017.

"I think a good reception is the most important and that's difficult to achieve unless we resolve the housing situation. That's what I wanted to tell Ylva Johansson," Heister told Swedish Television.

"A particularly significant challenge is to arrange temporary homes for target groups that lack resources and newly arrived migrants belong to that group. Many municipalities see rebuilding and temporary accommodation in the form of modular houses as quick fixes," Heister wrote in her letter to Johansson.

Heister also told local media that several municipalities are already unable to take in the refugees that have been allocated to them. Endit