AlHijjah 02, 1436, September 16, 2015, SPA -- Chancellor Angela Merkel late Tuesday pledged additional support from the federal government for receiving and distributing tens of thousands of migrants entering the country via southern Europe, according to dpa. After meeting nearly four hours with the prime ministers of the 16 states, Merkel said: "The important thing now is to create an orderly and transparent process to deal with the large number of refugees." The prime ministers were demanding more help than the 6 billion euros agreed by the ruling coalition at federal level more than a week ago. Three billion euros (3.4 billion dollars) were set aside in the 2016 budget for federal migrant assistance and a similar amount for states and municipalities. Thuringia Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow of the Left Party called for the amount "at least to be doubled and for the commitments to be speeded up" in remarks to a local newspaper. Merkel said that the federal government would create 40,000 places for newly arriving migrants. Distribution centers are to be created. "Such pivotal points are needed," she said. The country as a whole must provide a massive push to deal with the crisis, she said. Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer insisted that the migrants be rapidly integrated into German society. "We need a national pact between all the players, not only the federal government, the states and the municipalities, but also business, the trade unions and civil society," she said. Dreyer also said the bureaucracy for handling refugees and migrants had to be speeded up. She noted that Switzerland completed the processing in 48 hours, and the Netherlands in 11 days, while Germany took more than five months. Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer expressed similar sentiments. Bavaria has thus far shouldered the heaviest burden, with most of the new arrivals crossing the state's border with Austria. Seehofer, a powerful actor on the federal stage as head of the Christian Social Union (CSU), a key component of the federal coalition government, has clashed publicly with Merkel since she announced a virtual open-door policy at the beginning of the month. Germany was forced to backtrack on that decision on Sunday evening, when Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere ordered immigration checks set up on the Austrian border, suspending the free travel under the Schengen Agreement. Austria and Slovakia took similar action, pointing to the German measure in justification, and Hungary's controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed Germany's decision, as his country sealed its border with Serbia. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann predicted "that these border controls will run for some weeks or even months." But his Rhineland-Palatinate counterpart, Roger Lewentz, insisted the that they should be in place "no more than a few weeks under any circumstances." The federal government's KfW investment bank said on Tuesday it had lent 184 million euros (208 million dollars) to municipalities in the first week of a massive lending programme to rush construction of hostels for migrants. With forecasts of up to a million migrants this year - equivalent to more than 1 per cent of its population - Germany is racing to build enough space to hold them before winter snows arrive. KfW earlier announced 300 million euros for emergency lending to local authorities, and after just over a week well over half had been taken up, a KfW spokesman said. The bank, which belongs to the government, is offering municipalities 30-year loans interest-free for the first 10 years so that 30,000 people can be offered accommodation. Germany has relaxed building and zoning rules so it can erect prefabricated buildings at high speed on vacant land.
