The head of Berlin's main asylum seeker registration center has been forced to resign over the chaos plaguing the office, which is struggling to process a record number of newcomers.
The resignation by Franz Allert late Wednesday came shortly after the German capital's mayor Michael Mueller made an open call on public broadcaster RBB for "new leadership for Lageso." Known by its acronym Lageso, Berlin's main registration center for asylum seekers is migrants' first port of call in the German capital.
Since June, hundreds of men, women and children have queued and jostled almost daily in its unsheltered dirt courtyard, some of them for weeks, waiting for a number and an initial interview with a frazzled bureaucrat inside. Security guards have contained the crowds, sometimes backed by police when scuffles have broken out, while neighborhood volunteers have averted disaster by handing out clothes, warm drinks and food as the weather turned chillier. It was also where a four-year-old Bosnian refugee was kidnapped and later raped and killed by a pedophile who apparently took advantage of the chaos at the site.
Meanwhile, a fire broke out yesterday in a hostel for migrants in the south-western German town of Herxheim, where an arson at another home for asylum seekers had shocked residents six days earlier. During the latest fire, care workers and nine asylum seekers evacuated the building, part of a stadium grandstand, without injury, police and firefighters said. One fire officer was slightly hurt in the incident. The cause of the fire had not immediately been determined but arson could not be ruled out, police said.
There have been repeated attacks on refugee centers in Germany over recent months after German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated the country was opening its doors to refugees fleeing wars in Syria and Africa. German police said late Wednesday that a fire that destroyed buildings housing refugees in a small city north of the northern port of Hamburg was caused by arson. The blaze overnight Tuesday destroyed three buildings in the center of Heide, Germany, a town of 21,000 people near the North Sea coast. There were no injuries.
Germany registered 964,574 new asylum seekers in the first 11 months of the year, putting Europe's top economy on track for a million arrivals in 2015. Some 206,101 migrants arrived in November alone, a new monthly record, up from a previous high of 181,166 in October, according to the interior ministry. The number of arrivals was four times the total for all of 2014. Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to welcome Syrian refugees has won her plaudits but also sparked a backlash, with some senior ministers openly questioning the approach and her usually stellar poll ratings slipping several points.
