Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye announced on Wednesday at the Council of Ministers a special budgetary program “Prevention and fight against irregular migration”, asking the Prime Minister to initiate, “as soon as possible (…) inclusive national consultations”, with a view to “adjusting” the national strategy to combat this issue, reported the Senegalese Press Agency (APS / Official)
Bassirou Diomaye Faye returned to the capsizing of a pirogue carrying irregular migrants off the coast of Mbour, which occurred on September 8 and caused several deaths, estimating – quoted by APS – that this “tragedy” revealed “the complexity of the problem of illegal emigration, maintained by well-organized networks, real traffickers of human beings and merchants of illusions who must be punished by Justice according to the scale of their acts.”
Against irregular migration, early warning
The Senegalese head of state urged Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko to “strengthen, with the competent ministers, all preventive, security and coercive measures to combat the departure of migrants from the national territory,” the same source said.
He stressed “the urgency of strategic supervision by the Prime Minister of the interministerial system for combating irregular migration and a review of the national framework for piloting and operational coordination of activities to prevent and combat irregular migration, by strengthening early warning, collaboration with populations, awareness-raising and communication, particularly with regard to young people.”
As a reminder, 26 bodies, including that of an 18-year-old schoolgirl, were recovered off the coast of Mbour, around a hundred kilometres from Dakar, after the pirogue carrying them sank on 8 September.
The migrants had set sail from the coastal town of Mbour, hoping to reach the Spanish Canary Islands.
Boats leaving the Senegalese coast are generally overloaded and can contain several hundred migrants.
More than 5,000 people have died in the Atlantic trying to reach the Spanish islands in the first five months of this year, or 33 deaths per day, notes the NGO Caminando Fronteras, relayed by the information site Infomigrants.
By The editorial staffEditorial Committee – Casablanca
Related News :