Thiès, May 8 (APS) – The mayor of Thiès Babacar Diop pleaded, Tuesday, for a new approach in the future management of the Mbour 4 site, which will preserve the “strategic interests” of the city and the populations of Thiès.
“I ask him [au chef de l’Etat] – I hope that he has taken measures in this direction – that we reorient the approach adopted concerning Mbour 4 and the new city, while preserving the interests of the populations of Thiès, of the city, and of the communes,” said Babacar Diop, in a statement made in Wolof.
Babacar Diop gave a press conference at Thiès town hall, a week after the head of state’s visit to the site in question.
On May 1, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye traveled to the Mbour 4 site to see first-hand the situation on site.
This visit followed, on April 29, his decision to suspend all ongoing state procedures in certain disputed areas of the country, including the Mbour 4 site, on the outskirts of Thiès.
Part of the Thiès plateau forest was initially declassified to regularize populations who had settled there illegally. The second phase of decommissioning was to house the new town of Thiès. However, the terms of distribution of the plots had been criticized.
One of the electoral promises of candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye, during his visit to Thiès during the campaign, was to shed light on the distribution of land in Mbour 4, recalled the mayor of Thiès.
Babacar Diop pleaded for a reorientation of the approach in the management of the Mbour 4 site, which will preserve the strategic interests of the city of Thiès, which needs a local economic zone, to accommodate future foreign investments and other projects. Among these, he cited the construction of a new hospital and a jumbo jet station.
This area should, according to him, contribute to resolving certain social injustices, by helping to resettle victims of recurring flooding in the Nguinth district.
He indicated that he had proposed to the former authorities to take advantage of Mbour 4, to restructure neighborhoods like Keur Mame Elhadj, Mbambara Pencum Aly Nguer, Darou Salam, the regularization of which will necessarily involve the displacement of families. The new city should also have cemeteries, he said.
The mayor of Thiès indicated that he had noted, as soon as he took office as mayor, a “will of the regime [déchu] to remove the mayors of the municipalities and the city of Thiès from the steering and management of this important issue” of Mbour 4, inherited from the previous municipal team.
He noted that he was one of the first to warn about what he described as a “moral scandal” and a “bomb” and about which he had already discussed with the current president, while he was in detention at the Camp Manuel, in Dakar.
Babacar Diop indicated that he went on July 29, 2023, to the site where he publicly denounced “the scandal and corruption in the management of Mbour 4”.
“I must recall that 120 plots were allocated to the Thiès City Council and we allocated them to municipal councilors and Town Hall agents, to social and religious organizations and to certain citizens who had submitted requests,” he said. -he wanted to clarify.
The councilor of Thiès stressed that he had not been “allocated to any plot in Mbour 4, nor elsewhere in Thiès”, despite the offers and proposals made to him.
He believes that it is his “duty to support the efforts of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, to contribute to the implementation of presidential directives, to fight against social injustice in all its forms, to defend the rights of Thiéssois, to demand justice and shed light on this large-scale land scandal.”
ADI/MTN/ASG
