Expatica news

Shut down Verdonk’s ministry: Aboutaleb

13 April 2006

AMSTERDAM — Minister Rita Verdonk’s Immigration and Integration department should be closed down, Amsterdam’s Social Affairs Alderman Ahmed Aboutaleb has suggested. 

Aboutaleb told radio station BNR on Wednesday that Verdonk behaves like a second minister of justice as she almost exclusively focuses on immigration policy. As a result the government contributes nothing to integration of newcomers and this task is left to aldermen in the big cities.

The Labour Party alderman said it would be better to scrap the integration part of Verdonk’s ministry or transfer it to the Ministries of Social Welfare or Education. Both of which, he said, have funds for integration, while Verdonk doesn’t.

Born in Beni Sidel, Morocco in 1961, Aboutaleb has lived in the Netherlands since 1976. He studied electrical engineering and has also worked as a broadcast journalist. Until 2002, he was a director of multicultural development organisation FORUM and he has been an Alderman in Amsterdam since 2004, a position he holds again in the new coalition between the Labour Party and the green-left party GroenLinks. 

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2006]

Subject: Dutch news