Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) defended the setting up of tents for the reception of asylum seekers on Monday. “It was necessary to use tents,” he told journalists in Vienna. The Federal Agency for Care and Support Services (BBU) is tasked with “ensuring that no one is looking for a place to stay alone,” Karner says. Tents are “a sensible solution” for this.
The states are obliged to host refugees and have now reached “some areas beyond resilience”. It is now important to prevent young men for whom no permanent residence is available from looking for accommodation themselves and settling “in front of train stations, for kindergartens, for schools”. “If there is no other option, the tents will be used,” he emphasized. They will shortly be assigned to young men “with no prospect of asylum”. Specifically, the Minister of the Interior referred to men from India, Tunisia and Morocco in this regard.
Against Kickl proposal
It is “do what it takes”, the ÖVP politician confirmed. He rejected the populist proposal of FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, who argues for an ‘Illegal Immigration and Asylum’ dashboard with daily updated case numbers – thereby equating the corona pandemic with the refugee crisis. The minister emphasized that these figures already exist.
More money for accommodation
Meanwhile, Karner pointed out that maximum rates for individual and organized refugee reception will be adjusted in line with inflation. For organized accommodation, the daily rate is increased from 21 to 25 euros. For individual accommodation and meals, there is an extra 60 euros per adult per month for accommodation and 45 euros for meals. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the latter has so far only been implemented in Vienna, the other federal states have not yet made use of this discretionary power.
For displaced persons from Ukraine, the federal government takes over the financing of care in the first days in the respective arrival centers in the form of a flat arrival rate of 190 euros. All federal states continue to operate such arrival centers with the exception of Lower Austria and Burgenland.
Source: Krone
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