Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen made critical remarks on Thursday evening about the accommodation of asylum seekers in tents. “People who have to leave their country for various reasons must be humanely received in Austria until their residence status is clarified and most importantly, they must be properly cared for. We can do better than pitch thin tents,” he wrote on Twitter.
The reason for this was a meeting with refugee coordinator Andreas Achrainer, head of the federal welfare service. Van der Bellen thanked him and said that he “does exactly that with a lot of commitment and great expertise”, the Federal President said in the tweet (see below).
In mid-October, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) announced that asylum seekers who had little chance of asylum could be accommodated in tents. This is justified by the fact that the capacities of the federal government are exhausted due to the high number of Ukrainian refugees in basic services – and most states (except Vienna and Burgenland) do not comply with the federal agreement on refugee accommodation.
Shortly thereafter, the Federal Support Office — whose director is Achrainer — began setting up tents on federal properties in Carinthia, Upper Austria, Tyrol and Vorarlberg.
Source: Krone
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