Prague does not have the capacity for emergency accommodation for refugees
A tent city in Troy that offered emergency temporary housing to refugees closed in September. Photo: HZS Prague
Prague does not have the capacity for emergency accommodation for potential new refugees from Ukraine. At the same time, the city’s security council demands that the government create rules for the placement of additional refugees equally among all regions. Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates), the acting mayor of the capital, announced this on his Twitter. The Regional Assistance Center for Help to Ukraine (KACPU) in Prague handles several hundred refugees every day. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, more than 100,000 people have passed through it.
“On Tuesday, the security council of the capital city of Prague met to discuss the current refugee situation and the city’s readiness for a possible next wave of migration. She stated, among other things, that the accommodation capacity of emergency accommodation in Prague is already exhausted,” said Hřib.
In connection with this, according to the mayor, the security council appeals to the government to create a mechanism for the equal redistribution of refugees among the regions of the Czech Republic in preparation for a possible new wave.
“By the way, we have been calling for this since March of this year. It is also necessary for the government to grant the regions a strategy in case of a new wave of migration,” added the mayor.
Two tent cities operated in the metropolis, in Troja and in Malešice, which offered emergency temporary accommodation to refugees. Roma refugees from Ukraine, who originally spent the night at the main station, found asylum in the tents. Each town offered 150 beds and facilities with accessories. In the summer, both were merged into Troja, and then closed at the end of September.
The Prague municipality, in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), will launch another center to help refugees from Ukraine by the end of the year, aimed at those of them who have already been in the metropolis for a long time and are solving problems, for example, with housing or education.
It will operate in parallel with KACPU in the same building in Vysočany. KACPU will continue to offer existing services for newly arrived refugees, of whom it now handles about 200 to 300 a day.