2023-10-03 20:06:00
The Secretary of State in charge of the Buildings Authority has identified around twenty sites in the real estate stock under his supervision, mainly former offices of the FPS Finances. “These are classic offices which are not always equipped with sanitary facilities, although they are essential for welcoming asylum seekers. In order to bring them up to standard and respect the necessary equipment, we might install containers for the sanitary facilities,” he suggests.
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There are infrastructure problems on the one hand, and personnel issues on the other. We now have spaces available in which we can set up reception.
Already tested
“There are, on the one hand, infrastructure problems and, on the other, personnel issues. We now have spaces available in which we can set up reception. The idea would be to make these places dependent on larger centers but there would not be members of Fedasil staff permanently present. It would not be a question of leaving asylum seekers alone since the small structures would be under the responsibility of a larger center. But there would not be reception agents 24 hours a day, as is the case today. These centers would rather be dedicated to families,” assures the Secretary of State,
Fedasil has already tested this type of so-called “satellite” structures. A center of this type, with a capacity of 24 places, is already installed in Pondrôme (Namur). The Secretary of State intends to develop the practice and make it more structural. “We have identified around twenty sites, each able to accommodate around fifty people. It will be necessary to study which ones meet reception standards precisely, but this might certainly create several hundred places,” calculates Mathieu Michel.
Asylum seekers are mainly welcomed in Brussels and Wallonia
Towards requisitions?
Mathieu Michel also identified around a hundred housing units in so-called precarious management. This concerns, for example, housing near former gendarmerie or army barracks, which are now unoccupied. “Our idea would be to recover these accommodations and make them available to families. We might, in this way, create 200 or 300 places,” he illustrates.
Finally, the liberal identified three plots of land in the Régie park on which it is possible to install a container village, which would then have to be equipped. “But we don’t have a clear idea of the capacity here.”
The various proposals were presented this Tuesday at the table of the task force responsible for finding 2,000 reception places by winter. However, the meeting has not yet been able to produce concrete solutions. “There was talk of requisitioning certain buildings,” says a source, without saying more. The task force will meet once more next week.
Reception crisis in Belgium: municipalities have created only ten additional individual reception places in nine months
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