Britain is to begin work on 1.9- million-pound “new big wall” in French port of Calais, to block refugees and migrants jumping on to lorries to cross the English Channel via ferries and enter the United Kingdom illegally. We are going to start building this big new wall very soon as part of the £17million package we are doing with the French.
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The wall will be built along both sides of a 1-kilometer (0.6 mile) stretch of road approaching the Calais ferry port, according to the UK Home Office.
“Refugees are the first victims of the blockading of the border”, he said, a reference to a 2003 French-British accord that effectively puts the British border in Calais, where they are stopped from entering Britain, and puts the onus of the migrant plight on France.
But industry bodies have said the wall is a “waste of money” and will simply push the problem further down the road.
Since previous year, Calais has served as the location of the Jungle, notorious for its terrible living conditions.
The repeated efforts of its inhabitants to force their way through the Channel Tunnel or stow away aboard trucks passing through the port have disrupted traffic across the vital link between France and Britain, while locals say the violent shanty town is strangling the economy.
Hundreds of truckers in big rigs, farmers in tractors and dockers and merchants on foot blocked a major highway in northern France on Monday to demand the closure of the Calais migrant camp known as the “jungle”.
Numerous migrants living at the Jungle and other camps in northern France attempt to reach the United Kingdom by boarding lorries as they approach ports or the Eurotunnel.
Richard Burnett, the chief executive of the U.K.’s Road Haulage Association, said the proposal “would be a poor use of taxpayers’ money”.
And it’s meant to make it harder for migrants in the so-called “Calais jungle” to get on to the ferry port’s main dual-carriageway road and climb on board lorries heading for the Britain.
In an interview with newspaper Nord Littoral French Interior Minister Bernard Cazenueve vowed to complete the government project to dismantle the camp, but said it must be carried out “step by step”.
But Vicki Woodfine, of law firm DWF, who work with affected hauliers, said a wall “isn’t the answer”.
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In a joint statement, they said: “The priority now is to ensure that the camp is closed as quickly, efficiently and humanely as possible with the inhabitants relocated to alternative accommodation away from major worldwide ports”.
