In Mayotte, two and a half weeks after the devastating passage of the cyclone, the shanty towns reappear, weakening the promise of French Prime Minister François Bayrou to “prevent the reconstruction” of this precarious habitat where a third of the population of this archipelago lives. the Indian Ocean.
KEYSTONE
For several days, in Cavani Sud, the dull sound of tools has resonated in this neighborhood of huts which stretches for kilometers on the hillside, in Grande-Terre.
Under a blazing sun, men carry wooden blocks with rusty nails, a woman sits on the ground filling bags of cement, neighbors sort through the rubble, inspecting each piece of debris.
On December 14, Cyclone Chido swept away the precarious housing in this district of Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte.
But among the waste that litters the ground, the tin houses are rising again. To be able to build them urgently, system D is pushed to its limits, making these homes even more precarious and dangerous.
At the informal dump on the landfill of M’tsapéré, a village south of Mamoudzou, residents rummage through giant piles of garbage and leave with construction equipment in poor condition on their heads.
The house that Soubira Attoumani, a 41-year-old man, rebuilt with his brother is thus “less resistant than the one that was there before,” he sighs.
The question of rehousing
Chaher “took two days” to put the family home back together, completely destroyed by the winds. With a smile on his face, he proudly shows off the solar panels installed on the roof which provide him with precious electricity, which was failing on the island after Chido.
“The emergency is to take shelter to face the rainy season, since there are no solutions proposed by the State,” sighs, fatalistic, Soubira Attoumani.
During his trip to Mayotte at the start of the week, François Bayrou promised to “prevent the reconstruction” of the slums, without specifying where their inhabitants – a third of the population – would be relocated.
Questioned in Reunion about the barracks already rebuilt, he said that “we are obviously going to intervene.” “But we have to find reception centers (…) the State has the responsibility to say ‘this does not’ is not acceptable’.
The “emergency” bill for Mayotte, which should include a measure on the reduction of precarious housing, will be presented to the Council of Ministers next week.
The leader of the deputies of the far-right opposition of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, who said she wanted to do everything in her power “to speed up aid”, made it known on Thursday that she would go to Mayotte from Sunday to Tuesday.
Around a third of the population of Mayotte – officially 320,000 inhabitants according to official statistics, but perhaps 100,000 to 200,000 more given irregular immigration particularly from the Comoros – resides in precarious habitats. , which were completely destroyed by the cyclone.
