Administrative court questions need for new asylum-seeker centre

In a few weeks’ time the administrative court is to decide whether to grant permission for a new temporary container-style accommodation centre for asylum-seekers on the Obermühle site in the centre of Baar (photograph). Indeed, with reports in the press indicating that fewer refugees are arriving in Switzerland and with three asylum-seeker centres closing in Graubünden alone this month, the court itself wondered whether this new centre in Baar was really necessary. Hence it has written to the Department of Inner-Cantonal Affairs (DI), headed by cantonal government member Manuel Weichelt-Picard, for clarity about numbers. Earlier this year the court had overruled an appeal against the setting-up of the centre led by Thomas Aeschi, the SVP member who represents Zug in the National Council in Bern, and two other private individuals.

In her reply to the court, Weichelt-Picard of the Alternative Green Party pointed out that the facility for 97 places in the Salesium building in Zug could be withdrawn at only three months’ notice and that the 165 places in the former Cantonal  Hospital would only be available until 2024; then the accommodation at the Waldheim centre had closed in April, too. She reckoned that, what with the closure of the state-run asylum-seeker centre on the Gubel hill in Menzingen, and the general increase in the canton’s population, according to which Bern allocated refugees to individual cantons, the percentage earmarked for Zug could rise to1.5 per cent in 2019. The current annual quota, as per 2016, amounted to 220, and of those already here, some could well stay, meaning that the canton would be responsible for their social, linguistic and professional integration, and, according to Weichelt-Picard, especially if children were concerned, they would need to have appropriate stable accommodation where they could stay as families. Hence there was a definite need for this centre in Baar.

“This is just not on,” said Jakob Senn, who is advising the objectors to the centre. “There was never any mention of families before, more of young individuals likely to be able to stay. And these figures produced by the DI, they are just not correct; and we will prove it,” he insisted. “They are just mixing them all up in one pot so they can conceal the precise figures. He went on to question why, bearing in mind the number of asylum-seekers in Switzerland was falling, Zug had more than it did last year. “The figures just do not add up,” he said. “All asylum-seekers in the canton benefit from being accommodated with the occupation level for 2017 being 60 per cent. This says it all.”

Bearing in mind this response, the Zuger Zeitung again enquired at the DI, asking specifically why it was that, compared with other cantons, the number of asylum-seekers in Zug appeared not to be falling. The reply from the DI stated that, of the total number of 1,053 beds available, 724 were occupied as of the end of August, meaning an occupation level of 69 per cent with a reserve of 329 beds. “What one has to take into consideration,” wrote Weichelt-Picard, “was that it was not just a matter of new asylum-seekers arriving, but those who are already here. What should not be forgotten, either, is that, in other cantons, after a particular period of time, the asylum-seekers come under the authority of the individual municipalities, which is not the case here.”