A regional express train (TER) at the station in Dakar, Senegal on December 22, 2021 (AFP / SEYLLOU)
They are mechanics, market gardeners or other occupants expropriated along the route of the Dakar Regional Express Train (TER) to be inaugurated on Monday and claim 76 million euros from the Senegalese state.
“The TER has impoverished us. It is a project that has produced living dead,” Amina Bayo, a manager of a “TER impacted collective”, told AFP.
“The expropriated have suffered martyrdom. Some have returned to the village”, indicates a member of the Collective of some 16,000 natural and legal persons expropriated for the construction of the TER, of whom 2,000 have filed complaints with Apix, the public agency which ensured the project management.
“We are claiming 50 billion FCFA (76 million euros) from the State,” Ibrahima Cissé, president of the Collective, told AFP.
Senegalese traders affected by the works of the regional express train (TER) in front of their stores, on the relocated market in Thiaroye, Dakar, November 24, 2021 (AFP / SEYLLOU)
“I lived in Potou (a district of Dakar) in a 160 m2 house with eight rooms. I only received 1.9 million FCFA (nearly 3,000 euros). The State did not value the land “, says Pape Ngom, a member of the Collective.
The scale for compensation in Dakar is more than 700,000 FCFA (more than 1,000 euros) per square meter for a land title, more than 500,000 FCFA (750 euros) for a lease and 286,000 FCFA (approximately 450 euros) for an occupant. without right, according to an official document.
The TER, financed by the State of Senegal for 780 billion FCFA (over 1.1 billion euros), aims to relieve Dakar.
The authorities have identified the people to be expropriated and compensated for the loss of plots of housing, farmland, buildings, equipment and income.
– “Deprived Communes of Dakar” –
“The victims of the TER, homeless, without land and without work,” proclaims a banner in Colobane, a popular district of Dakar from where mechanics and second-hand dealers have been relocated. Police officers, to demonstrators about to deploy posters, the order to leave this place located near the TER maintenance center.
“The TER route is located in the areas of the so-called suburbs of Dakar where the most underprivileged and poorest populations of the Dakar region live (where) + spontaneous settlements + (slums and slums) are legion”, indicates the African Development Bank (ADB), partner of the project.
A regional express train (TER) in the maintenance department of Colobane, in Dakar, Senegal, on December 22, 2021 (AFP / SEYLLOU)
An amount of 42.8 billion FCFA (more than 64 million euros) was provided for compensation, according to the same source.
An exit from the toll motorway at Thiaroye leads to a vacant lot and then to a site for a market under construction in this suburb of Dakar, intended to accommodate the expropriated. Unfinished stalls, from which electric wires hang down to the ground, occupy an expanse of wild grasses.
“The site had to be delivered since April 2018 for more than 2,000 traders + evicted +”, says one of them, Ngagne Amar. “Resettlement sites have been planned, for households and traders in particular, but none have been fitted out,” complains Ibrahima Cissé.
– “Everything is transparent” –
“98.8% of people affected by the project have been compensated, or a total of 15,780” natural and legal persons, Yatma Dièye told AFP in charge of the liberation of the rights-of-way at Apix.
“The payment started in February 2017. Everything was transparent and done according to international standards. People have been paid several tens of millions of FCFA and the State is still working on the resettlement of traders and households,” he adds. -he.
Momar Diop Sidibe, a train driver, sits in the cabin at the front of the train in Dakar, Senegal on December 22, 2021 (AFP / SEYLLOU)
Many occupants of land located in the hold of the TER in Dakar had a “precarious and revocable title”, according to an administrative document, without specifying their number.
The people affected by the TER in February “lodged a complaint against the State of Senegal with donors, the French Development Agency (AFD) and the African Development Bank (BAD)”, said Mr. Cissé. AfDB and AFD did not respond to our request for information.
“The evidence received (from the expropriated) was generally weak,” says Dièye of these complaints.
“We plan to block the start of the TER on the day of the inauguration, to demand the satisfaction of our grievances”, warns Mr. Cissé.
© 2021 AFP
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