Abidjan in Ivory Coast launches a brigade to fight “urban disorder”

This brigade made up of 295 district and municipal police officers, led by an officer, "has the missions of liberating major arteries, liberating public spaces which are squatted" and that of "non-buildable spaces (...) which are occupied,” announced the district governor, Ibrahim Cissé Bacongo, during the launching ceremony.

These agents will also have to "ensure the application of the order prohibiting itinerant trade, begging and the use of handcarts (for the transport of goods, editor's note)" taken in April, he said. he continued.

In Côte d'Ivoire, "the informal urban sector employs nearly 7 million people, more than the agricultural sector or the formal sector", according to the World Bank.

The use of plastic bags, the ban on which in 2013 is very little respected, will also be monitored by the brigade.

“Its primary objective is to be the guarantor of urban order” and “the improvement of our living and working conditions”, underlined Mr. Bacongo.

This measure is part of a global policy carried out in particular in the name of sanitation, started in February with mass evictions and demolitions in the precarious neighborhoods of Abidjan, particularly in flood-prone areas.

This year, at least 24 people died in ten days after heavy rains in the metropolis.

In certain neighborhoods, businesses were also destroyed to improve roads.

After a controversy, the government announced rehousing assistance measures for evicted people in March.

The brigade "aims to give a more pleasant face to our economic capital, a capital which must be dignified", also affirmed the Minister of the Interior, Vagondo Diomandé, when Prime Minister Robert Beugré Mambé called for the "maintenance of a dialogue with the populations.