Prague will close one of its reception centers for refugees from Ukraine to force them to move to other Czech regions after exceeding the limit of the capital’s reception capacity, announced Monday the mayor of the metropolis, the Pirate Party politician, Zdenek Hrib.
The mayor had given the Czech government an ultimatum to present before May 17 a plan for “fair redistribution” throughout the country of people who arrive escaping Russian aggression in Ukraine, warning that otherwise the center would be closed. host.
“Between Prague and other regions there are differences of up to four times in the number of refugees per thousand inhabitants,” Hrib stressed today, referring to the saturation of accommodation capacities for these refugees in Prague, where families and children spend the night at the station railway station.
Several NGOs that assist those fleeing from the war have been denouncing the unworthy conditions in the corridors of the important railway junction for days.
To ease the tense situation there, the first refugee tent camp, with an initial capacity of 150 beds, was inaugurated last Saturday in the capital’s Troja district.
In Prague there are currently 59.6 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants, above Brno, the country’s second largest city, with 43.9.
The Czech Republic, a country of 10.7 million inhabitants, a member of the European Union and NATO that has so far granted 320,000 special visas to refugees from the country at war, registers a non-uniform distribution of the migratory wave.
That visa allows them to reside there until March 31, 2023, and the State provides housing assistance, medical insurance or free access to the labor market to people who arrive fleeing Russian aggression.
Of those who arrived, 85% are women and children, while among adults, women are three times more than men, according to data from the Czech Ministry of the Interior.