Started in April in Mayotte, Operation Wuambushu continues. The authorities thus indicated that they had carried out new large-scale destruction of unsanitary housing in this French department in the Indian Ocean on Monday.
Bulldozers, police and officials were present Monday morning in the village of Hamouro, located in the town of Bandrélé (south-east of Mayotte). There, according to the figures communicated by the prefecture of Mayotte on X, “81 illegal dwellings were demolished”, “36 families were identified and 7 of them accepted an accommodation offer”.
Associations denounce a “brutal” operation
The land concerned will thus be virgin by the end of the week, according to the prefectural decree. Relocation proposals are mandatory, under the terms of the Élan law of 2018 on which the prefectural destruction order is based.
This is the largest “unpacking” in Mayotte since the launch of Operation Wuambushu, which aims to reduce unsanitary housing and expel people in an irregular situation in the archipelago. An operation denounced by associations as “brutal”, “anti-poor” and violating the rights of migrants, but supported by elected officials and many Mahorais.
At the end of June, when this operation was to be completed, Gérald Darmanin had announced its extension and indicated that the State was considering the destruction of around 1,250 unsanitary housing in Mayotte by “the end of the year”, including 1,000 boxes in sheet metal in two months. Since the beginning of June, around 500 makeshift homes have been demolished, according to prefect Thierry Suquet. Of the estimated 350,000 inhabitants of Mayotte, half do not have French nationality. Only a third of the inhabitants of slums have it.