A number of Dutch mayors and refugee group organisations met MPs on Wednesday to answer questions about the government’s ‘bed and board’ agreement for failed asylum seekers.

The meetings took place ahead of a debate on the plans with ministers on Thursday.

According to broadcaster Nos, mayors at the meeting consider the plan to limit emergency shelters to five big cities and to allow refugees to stay in them only if they agree to cooperate with their deportation as ‘not sensible and not clear’.

In addition, they are angry that the cabinet plans to fine councils which continue to offer emergency shelter to failed asylum seekers in their locality, the broadcaster says.

Unrealistic

Rotterdam’s mayor Achmed Aboutaleb said the plans are unrealistic. ‘Two to three weeks means three to six months to me,’ Aboutaleb said. ‘That is what you need to organise the papers and to convince people to leave. And that is what I have told the ministers in charge.’

Decency

Aboutaleb said the system can never be completely watertight. ‘I am not blaming anyone but it is a fact,’ he said. ‘In Rotterdam no one should sleep outdoors, even if I have to go out and find them myself. That is the bottom line when it comes to common decency.’

‘There should be financial support for taking care of the homeless, not punishment,’ said Katwijk mayor Jos Wienen, who also chairs the local authorities’ association VNG.

Marjan Sax from the refugee support group We Are Here told MPs the government wrongly believes the failed refugees can easily go home.

‘Many of them cannot prove who they are and can’t get the documents they need to return,’ she said. ‘They have no access to officials to get the right paperwork.’