Ivory Coast’s government Tuesday announced at the end of an extraordinary cabinet meeting, the “immediate demolition by public force” of houses and infrastructure built on waterways, especially in Abidjan where floods killed several people recently.
“The Head of State instructed the ministers concerned to proceed with the destruction by the police of all the infrastructures that remain on the waterways. There is a minimum of procedures that will be followed for the destruction, but for the most flagrant cases, we will proceed with immediate destruction,” said government spokesperson Sidi Tiémoko Touré.
Touré regretted that some people using their position of authority are resisting or taking advantage of the weakness of judicial procedures to continue their incivility.
“We must definitively stop these acts of incivility and enjoin these people who have houses on the waterways to have them destroyed or they will be destroyed by the police,” he warned, adding that the owners of these houses have “certainly” already been informed of the move.
The heavy rains that have watered the district of Abidjan in recent days have caused about twenty deaths, several missing and property damage.
LB/ls/lb/abj/APA