Lhe 40 Brussels neighborhood committees are asking the federal government, in an open letter, to deploy a new “Canal Plan” in the fight against drug-related crime and nuisance in the city. The federal executive must, according to them, be more present and more active than it is at present.
About a year after the first open letter in August last year, the committees are now denouncing a lack of basic security in public spaces, a worsening of poverty in the streets, drugs, attacks and a lack of chronic cleanliness. “The situation in our streets has only gotten worse,” they still deplore.
They believe that the causes would be the large group of undocumented people in Brussels, the massive arrival of hard drugs on the streets as well as the now well-established presence of crack and the fight for the exchange of territories between the gangs.
According to the committees, to tackle the problem, the federal government must focus on a new Canal plan, in line with that deployed in 2015 under the then Minister of the Interior, Jan Jambon (N-VA ), following the Paris attacks and the terrorist threat in Belgium. The police and justice system should, they say, focus on fighting drug trafficking, but at the same time, only a social response can help undocumented immigrants, the homeless and other people prone to drug addiction to move forward. “No one should sleep rough, because the transition from homelessness to drug use is far too rapid and frequent. »
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