Speaking to radio station Europe 1 earlier this week, Calais mayor Ms Bouchart said she was exhausted of hearing members of the government say the “Jungle” migrant camp would be dismantled “in stages”.
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French authorities already cleared the southern part of the camp in March.
Bernard Cazeneuve said on Friday that the process would be “gradual and controlled.to definitively close the camp” where thousands of people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia have taken shelter, hoping to make their way to Britain. But this month the number of people in the camp reached an all-time high of nearly 10,000 people, aid organisations estimate.
RHA chief executive Richard Burnett said the organisation has spoken to a representative of the French road transport union, the FNTR, who said that on Monday at 7.30am (local time) lorries and tractors will be gathering at Dunkirk to the north of Calais and Bolougne to the south.
Tensions between migrants have led to clashes, and two died in fights within a month.
The Socialist minister’s pledge in Nord Littoral newspaper was attacked as insufficient by Natacha Bouchart, the conservative… The bid to demolish the 72 shops and restaurants in the makeshift camp was a first step, he said.
The organizers plan to block the A16 motorway leading to the port with a “human chain”, and are pledging that they will not break it until the “Jungle”, blamed for the worsening security and economic situation in the area, is totally dismantled.
Gangs are paid thousands of pounds by vulnerable people to get them to Calais, from where some are smuggled to Britain to work to pay off huge debts to people traffickers.
A planned blockade by lorry drivers protesting about the migrant crisis in Calais has been downgraded to a “go-slow”.
The groups called on the French government to quickly expand its ability to take in migrants elsewhere and demand that Britain shoulder its responsibility – or threaten an end to the Touquet accords. Undoing them would return British police, customs officials and sniffer dogs to their home across the English Channel and put the onus on Britain to screen migrants wanting to live there. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
She said: “We tried that once before, and yet the number of refugees living in the camp has doubled”.
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