Parents and a group opposed to the municipality denounce the presence of used syringes in front of the Maurice-Korsec school. Opposition elected officials call on the city hall to take action.
A disrupted return to school. At the Maurice-Korsec school in the Saint-Charles district of Marseille, used syringes, still with their needles, were found right in front of the school building on Monday, September 2, the first day of the school year.
A situation that worries the parents of students, who like the rest of the inhabitants, note and denounce an increase in drug trafficking in the neighborhood. Maria, mother of three girls, says that this is not the first time she has seen syringes scattered in the street.
“We saw them, I told my children not to touch them. They are dangerous objects, a child can accidentally prick themselves and catch diseases,” she denounced to BFM Marseille Provence. She plans to discuss the problem with the school.
“It’s dangerous for children, it’s dangerous for society,” adds Mamady, a father. “In my opinion, it’s a scandal.”
City Hall ordered to act
The municipal opposition has taken up the issue, and believes that it is up to the town hall to act to avoid this health and safety problem. “We ask Benoît Payan to act for the safety of the little people of Marseille”, writes in particular on X the opposition group Une Volonté pour Marseille, chaired by Catherine Pila (LR).
The latter has also published a video where we can already see several syringes littering the ground two days before the start of the school year. “They have been there for several days,” she says after being alerted by teachers and parents of students.
“I contacted Christine Juste, the deputy for cleanliness in the city of Marseille, but I especially contacted Michèle Rubirola who is the deputy in charge of public health and I urged her to get rid of the syringes that were less than ten meters from the entrance to the school,” she added to our microphone.
In particular, it requests that syringes be removed as soon as a report is made by a resident, a teacher or even a parent of a student.
“A bad trial”
On the set of BFM Marseille Provence this Tuesday, September 3, the deputy mayor in charge of education, Pierre Huguet, confided that he did not “understand the controversy that the opposition group is trying to lead.”
“I have even more difficulty understanding how Catherine Pila, primary school principal in Marseille, is using this situation to create a bad controversy and a bad trial for the city of Marseille,” he replied.
Before insisting: “safety, and that of children in particular, is also the priority of the municipal majority.”
Catherine Pila, for her part, invites the deputy “to go and see” the surroundings of “the schools in the city centre which are suffering from the same situation”.
According to information from BFM Marseille Provence, a group of residents of the Saint-Charles district are planning to set up a clean-up operation soon to collect these syringes, as well as other waste present such as rubbish or razors.
Jimmy Comte, with Juliette Moreau Alvarez
