Opposition accuses ruling party of hypocrisy in migrant dispute
The construction of lodgings for Muslim migrants to work on the expansion of a refinery belonging to Poland's PKN Orlen petroleum company has spurred the opposition to accuse the ruling party of hypocrisy in the wake of its reluctance to agree to an EU migrant relocation scheme.
On Thursday, Jan Grabiec, the spokesperson for the main opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), said on Twitter that lodgings for 13,000 migrants from India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan were under construction in Plock, central Poland, where the Orlen refinery is located.
According to Grabiec, the migrant workers are needed to "expand Orlen's refinery."
The news came amid the government's hefty protests against an EU-proposed migrant relocation plan, which foresees mandatory migrant quotas for the EU members or payment of a per-capita financial equivalent in the event of a country's refusal to admit migrants.
On Thursday, the Sejm, the lower parliamentary house, passed a resolution condemning the EU's migrant relocation scheme.
In response to Grabiec's tweet, Krzysztof Sobolewski, the secretary general of Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, said his claims "contain numerous lies," and threatened him with a lawsuit.
On Friday morning, Grabiec told PAP that his Thursday tweet in the matter had been true, and suggested that PiS's "panic-stricken response" to it showed that the ruling party feared the news could leak out to the broader public.
