Visiting Mayotte, in order to take stock of his operation to maintain order “Wuambushu”, Gérald Darmanin announced this Sunday, June 25 that his ministry is working on the destruction of approximately 1,250 unsanitary housing on the archipelago of Indian Ocean. A goal to be achieved by “the end of the year”, he said, regretting “the delay” in this operation due to “very many legal remedies”.
Accompanied by Deputy Ministers Olivier Klein (Housing) and Jean-François Carenco (Overseas), the Minister of the Interior attended, on the second day of his trip to Mayotte, the destruction of the last unsanitary huts in the Badamiers district of Dzaoudzi, in Petite-Terre.
“There will have been roughly 1,250 (destructions) by the end of the year,” he said. The minister had mentioned 1,000 destructions by the end of the year in his interview with Le Figaro, posted online Friday evening.
The destruction of the bangas (unsanitary huts) is one of the components of the “Wuambushu” operation launched at the end of April by the minister. “We will accelerate […]. This component, assured the Beauvau tenant, has been delayed due to the numerous appeals. »
“I would have liked,” he continued, “for those who came to do legal tourism in Mayotte to visit the bangas, unsanitary places where children do not have running water, where if there was a cyclone, we would all have cried over the very many deaths that there would have been here”, and this “to prevent the construction of social housing”.
“What is important, insisted the minister, is the destruction of substandard housing and regaining control of the land. »
In the afternoon, Gérald Darmanin went with Olivier Klein to the relay village managed by the Coallia association in Tsoundzou 2, in the east of the big island. “Here, 37 families” from the slums “live in dignified conditions before finding permanent housing”, tweeted the Minister of the Interior.
“Wuambushu […] does not solve any fundamental problem, on the contrary increases the tensions between inhabitants of the island and aggravates the great poverty of already very precarious people”, on the other hand estimated the leaders of seven NGOs and associations, including Doctors of the world, Secours Catholique and the Abbé-Pierre Foundation, in a column published on Saturday by Le Monde.
During his visit, Gérald Darmanin also promised to remedy the lack of water affecting this French archipelago in the Indian Ocean and announced a freeze on the price of bottled water from July 15.
The minister also said he was keen to “develop tourism” in the 101st French department, noting that “there is no reason that Mayotte is not a very beautiful place of tourist destination”. He promised to return there in September.
