The Czech Streetwork Association has called for the opening of a centre for drug addicts in Prague, in an open letter sent to the Prague 5 district hall. The call is in response to the planned closure of a centre operated by the NGO Progressive o.p.s., which has provided services for addicts in Prague 5 for nearly 20 years.
Prague 5 district mayor Renata Zajickova (ODS) told CTK that the district hall decided to end the lease of the centre in July and the NGO must move out in six months. The district has been complaining about the presence of drug addicts for a long time.
Martina Zikmundova of the Streetwork Association, which runs outreach service programs for addicts in the community, said this step would not improve social problems associated with drug addiction, but on the contrary worsen them both in the district and the whole city. She asked the district hall to cooperate with Prague City Hall to find a new location where the centre for addicts could operate.
Zimkundova and Vojtech Janouskovec, director of Progressive o.p.s., recommended that the period of six months before the current centre must close be extended to 12 months.
Zajickova has previously complained that two of the three contact centres for drug addicts in Prague are in the 5th district, as well as a facility for opioid substitution treatment. She said Prague City Hall should deal with the issue of drug addiction by developing a network of places offering services for addicts. The City Hall presented the plan of this network in June. In this context, the end of operations at an overburdened centre that fails in its main purpose is logical, she wrote on Facebook.
According to the new strategy recently approved by City Hall, there should be at least nine contact centres in the city. Prague city councillor for Social Affairs, Milena Johnova (Prague For Itself), said the new centres should open in 2023 and 2024 and the capacity of the present centres should be gradually lowered.
An analysis by the 1st Medical Faculty of Charles University in the spring concluded that the contact centres in Prague had about 7,000 clients in 2021 and about 6,000 in 2020.
