archive photo
© Thomas Vanden Driessche
Putin's war: emergency reception centre opens in Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe
The Red Cross
is opening an emergency reception centre for Ukrainian refugees. The centre in Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe
(Brussels) can accommodate 1,500 refugees for short stays.
The Red
Cross centre comes in addition to a first centre operated by the Belgian asylum
and migration agency Fedasil in Molenbeek (Brussels).
“The new
centre is intended to provide refugees without friends or relatives in Belgium
with a first reception place. It’s for
people who have not yet been designated a reception place in one of our
municipalities. They can stay here for
one or two days. Then they will move on
to the town or municipality they have been referred to, where they can stay for
longer” says the Red Cross’s Jan Poté.
Ukrainian
refugees will also receive practical information about their stay in
Belgium. The second emergency reception
centre is much bigger than the one in Molenbeek that can only accommodate 250.
“Some 80 to
100 people stay at that first centre every day.
It’s not yet being used at full capacity. We’ve been asked to prepare for a much larger
influx. Hopefully we will never need
this capacity, but we are ready” says Poté.
