2023-08-14 21:03:00
Gérald Darmanin had announced that the government is working on the destruction of around 1,250 substandard housing on the Indian Ocean archipelago.
By VD with AFP 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. © SANDRINE ETOA ANDEGUE / France Info / Radio France/Maxppp Published on 08/14/2023 at 9:03 p.m.
The authorities indicated that they had carried out new large-scale destruction of unsanitary housing in Mayotte on Monday as part of operation “Wuambushu”, launched in April in this French department in the Indian Ocean to fight against delinquency. Bulldozers, police and officials were present Monday morning in the village of Hamouro, located in the town of Bandrélé (south-east of Mayotte). There, according to the figures communicated by the prefecture of Mayotte on X (ex-Twitter), “81 illegal dwellings were demolished”, “36 families were identified and 7 of them accepted an accommodation offer”.
The land concerned will thus be virgin by the end of the week, according to the prefectural decree. Relocation proposals are mandatory, under the terms of the Élan law of 2018 on which the prefectural destruction order is based. This is the largest “unpacking” in Mayotte since the launch of Operation Wuambushu, which aims to reduce unsanitary housing and expel people in an irregular situation in the archipelago. An operation denounced by associations as “brutal”, “anti-poor” and violating the rights of migrants, but supported by elected officials and many Mahorais.
1,250 substandard housing destroyed
At the end of June, when this operation was to be completed, Gérald Darmanin had announced its extension and indicated that the State was considering the destruction of around 1,250 unsanitary housing in Mayotte by “the end of the year”, including 1 000 sheet metal boxes in two months. Since the beginning of June, around 500 makeshift homes have been demolished, according to prefect Thierry Suquet. In Hamouro, seven families had lodged appeals against the operation with the administrative court of Mamoudzou, which the latter rejected on 21 July. Of the estimated 350,000 inhabitants of Mayotte, half do not have French nationality. Only a third of the inhabitants of slums have it.
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