The private company responsible for evacuating camps in the North has “dismissed” the employee who slashed migrant tents, said Gerald Darmanin on Tuesday during a hearing before the National Assembly’s Law Commission.
Long denounced by associations, the lacerations of tents belonging to exiles on the northern coast have aroused strong indignation, especially since they were documented in Grande-Synthe at the end of 2020 by an independent photojournalist.
A hearing on the migration situation
“Effectively absolutely not acceptable, a company, I will not quote it because the person who looked after it was made redundant, withdrew the tents by tearing them apart and then put them in the dumpster”, declared the Minister of the Interior, heard on the migratory situation in Pas-de-Calais two weeks after the shipwreck in the Channel which claimed the lives of 27 migrants.
The fired person is the one “who slashed” the tents, and not the head of the company, said the minister’s entourage. In Grande-Synthe, the Ramery group is responsible for cleaning up the premises after the evacuations and in particular for removing the tents. Asked several times, the company did not wish to speak.
Tents thrown at the recycling center
“They were not police and gendarmes (who slashed), there was no migrant inside and at the end these tents would go whatever happened to the dump,” said Gerald Darmanin.
“I understand the emotion”, he again declared before the deputies, specifying that he asked the prefects of Nord and Pas-de-Calais “to clearly include in the calls for tenders of the companies of waste that there are no tents’ lacerations.