Asylum seekers in Germany are refusing their meals because they say they would rather have cash instead.
In the southern German district of Baden Ortenaukreis near Strasbourg, asylum seekers have been refusing meals given to them by the staff at an asylum home. The migrants have told the staff that the food they are getting is making them sick and that they cannot eat, it reports Junge Freiheit.
District Administrator Frank Scherer has dismissed the claims of the migrants. He said, “all authorities and volunteer helpers provide in respect of our humanitarian and historical responsibilities, the utmost effort to ensure that the people coming to us not only have a roof over their heads, are well cared for and fed, but also are welcomed and if possibility permits are rapidly integrated.”
The board who run the asylum home have hired what they call a renowned catering service to better accommodate the tastes of migrants who may not be able to eat a typical German currywurst because of the very strict religious diet many of them adhere to. Scherer criticized the migrants who said they will get sick from the food as none of the migrants had yet tried the food offered by the new catering service.
The new caterers are the eighth one the board has had to employ because of complaints by the residents.
More than 60 migrant men who are seeking asylum in the region have been involved with the boycott of food at the home which started on April 7th. Many have resorted to buying their own food but their funds are limited and so are now requesting that the government give them more.
The District office was quick to refuse the request saying that already a considerable sum of tax payer money has been allocated to the housing, medical care and food for the asylum seekers.
The spokesman of the district told media that it wasn’t logistically possible for the migrants to buy their own food because it would mean that they would further require their own cooking appliances, sinks, refrigerators and more. They say it’s just simply too costly and impractical for the district to implement, especially when they have worked so hard on making sure nothing on the catering service could be in any way objectionable to the migrants.
Since they have access to the food at the cafeteria the migrants are paid around 144 euros less than migrants who have no access to the service. Many migrants see that as unfair and some wish to be able to send money back to relatives in their homelands to support them or to help fund bringing them to Germany.
Protests over conditions at asylum homes have been a constant feature over the course of the migrant crisis. Migrants have occupied buildings, gone on hunger strikes over issues from food to slow internet. Migrants along the Greek border have taken their protests to extremes, recently threatening to throw their own infant children at police or placing them on railway tracks if they don’t get what they demand.