Shelter or segregation?
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This week Prague council approved a controversial plan to open a centre for the city's homeless out in the suburbs. Officials say the shelter will offer vital help to people living on the capital's streets, but rights activists accuse them of trying to push the problem out of sight and out of mind.
The city council descibes the new project as “an integrated assistance centre” for the homeless.
The idea is that within the next six months a group of tents and pre-fabricated cabins will be set up on the outskirts of town where the homeless can get shelter, medical assistance and two hot meals a day.
It is intended for those who have little chance of ever returning to a normal life and who get turned away from other shelters because they are uncooperative, too violent, drunk or on drugs.
The camp is the brainchild of councillor Jiří Janeček who insists that homeless people will not be physically forced to go there, but says that the police and social workers in the city centre will encourage them to do so by conducting constant ID checks and ordering them to move elsewhere.
The idea has outraged human rights activists and NGOs working with the homeless, who accuse the council of trying to set up a ghetto and conveniently move the problem out of the city centre and out of the public's consciousness.
Opposition councillors are vowing that if they win enough seats in the autumn's local elections then they will put a stop to the plan.
