“The residents of Mbour IV are very tired. They have lived in promiscuity, in total uncertainty for more than thirty years. Fathers and mothers have died, leaving behind a host of problems for their offspring. Families are suffering, enduring, struggling until now to receive their attribution documents. It’s really frustrating. It even affected social cohesion.” This cry from the heart comes from the Collective of the occupants of Mbour IV, in Thiès, which reiterates its wish to the President of the Republic, Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, and to the Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, to “respect the principle of continuity of service” .By Cheikh CAMARA –
More than 9 months of waiting. This Sunday, the inhabitants of Mbour IV, thanks to a large General Assembly, followed by a press point, to “better share the new orientations of land management defined by the State of Senegal”, met put on their knees to, just, request from President Diomaye Faye and his PM Ousmane Sonko, a “definitive specific treatment” to the specific problems that torment their minds.
The communications manager of the said collective, Aliou Badji, recalls that the specificity of the problem of Mbour IV truly deserves specific treatment to allow all the occupants to realize the dream of having a house. The collective, in its peaceful, participatory and inclusive approaches, has always supported and helped local, administrative authorities and heads of technical services in their control, monitoring and alert missions. This role of facilitator played with courage, loyalty and dignity allowed the land technicians to do remarkable work on the site already occupied.
The inhabitants of the area draw the attention of the President of the Republic and his Prime Minister to the current situation in this area: “The problems of land dispossession have been noted, discussed exclusively in the area reserved for the New Town of Thiès . While in the site already occupied to restructure and regularize (135 ha) and that reserved for the extension subdivisions of Mbour IV (176 ha), no deviation or nebulous practice has been noted or reported; nothing at all.” An achievement that they solemnly ask the President of the Republic to “consolidate for the exclusive benefit of the populations of Mbour IV”, recalling that “the decree of downgrading of Mbour IV and that of the New Town of Thiès do not have the same contents. It’s totally different.”
He recalls that Mbour IV experienced three pathetic series of demolitions on the same site without prior notice from the Water and Forestry department, in 2009; from the town hall of Thiès-Ouest, in 2014; the Dscos, in 2021. “Sad, pathetic, horrible episodes”, “unprecedented suffering”. Also, he underlines that it was at the end of this painful ordeal of the 2021 demolitions that the collective, in perfect collaboration with the victims, hired a bailiff to carefully identify the people impacted, followed by a succinct report established for this purpose.
Despite the series of arrests, intimidations and all-out repressions, the collective of the inhabitants of Mbour IV, straight in its boots, recalls having carried the path of negotiations with courage and determination until the decision of the former President of the Republic, Macky Sall, to sign decree n°2022-1441 of July 25, 2022 declassifying 484 ha of the classified forest of Thiès for the needs of the regularization of the situation of the occupants of Mbour IV and harmonization of the urbanization of polarized areas. This area (484 ha) is divided into three sites and is well delimited by geographical coordinates (UTM – WGS84 – 28N): “the site already occupied to restructure and regularize (135 ha)”; “the site reserved for the extension subdivisions of Mbour IV (176 ha)”; “the sites reserved for the extension of the Zac de Thiès (173 ha) treated at the Urban Planning level”.
-To follow up on the regulatory provisions for managing the land base, the Regional Soil Conservation Commission, made up of Governance, the Prefecture, local authorities and all heads of technical services (Urban planning, estates), had involved positively the members of the Executive Office of the Collective of occupants of Mbour IV in the process and dynamics of restructuring and regularization of the site already occupied and that reserved for the extension subdivisions of Mbour IV which cover respectively 135 hectares and 176 hectares.
This is how participatory and inclusive strategies were put in place to facilitate the activity assigned to land technicians: “the exploitation of the General Subdivision Plan of Mbour IV in the targeted 135 ha”; “the identification of holders of letters of allocation and deeds of sale in the 2006 subdivision area for possible resettlement in the dedicated 176 ha”; “the census, in transparency, of all land owners (inhabited houses, houses under construction, pains and care or even spaces called bare land)”…
Having a good command of the configuration of this part of declassified land, the collective of occupants of Mbour IV had carried out a pre-census covering the area of the 2006 subdivision, that of the demolished houses which were not taken into account by the Bailiff of justice and the newly subdivided part extending to the Route de Dakar-Extension district to allow the technical services to better establish the fundamentals of their preliminary work plan.
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