Africa News Bulletin

Cape Verde: Families living in tents on the island of Boa Vista relocated in apartments

The Prime Minister of Cape Verde, Ulisses Correia e Silva, opens on Friday, in Boa Vista, housing developments with around 80 apartments for rehousing families who live in tents on that tourist island.

At the start of the two-day visit to Boa Vista, the Prime Minister recalled that the Government Program for this legislature and the Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development (PEDS) 2017-2021 “defined as a priority access to decent housing for the poorest families”. vulnerable”.

“It was with this vision that the Household Resettlement Program was conceived (…) on the island of Boa Vista. One of the priority interventions foreseen in the program is the elimination of informal settlements on tourist islands and the resettlement of their residents, which should benefit more than 500 families”, he explained.

On Friday, Ulisses Correia e Silva will inaugurate, in Chã de Salinas, the housing developments built under the Rehousing and Eradication of Tents program, in a total of around 80 apartments, of different types, in an investment of around 220 million escudos (two million euros), plus 448 million escudos (four million euros) for infrastructure, requalification and connection to the sanitation network.

“This is yet another measure that is being addressed to disadvantaged social strata, in order to contribute to better living conditions”, underlined the head of the Government.

On his visit to Boa Vista, Ulisses Correia e Silva will also inaugurate the project to mobilize desalinated water. With a production capacity of up to 200 cubic meters of drinking water per day, the unit is based on two existing boreholes in Fundo de Figueiras, the project having included the installation of water distribution networks between the three villages and the connection of domestic water , in an investment of 60 million escudos (540 thousand euros).

The mayor of Boa Vista, Cláudio Mendonça, said in an interview with Lusa last April that more than three thousand families live in difficulties in terms of housing on that island, a situation aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic.

According to the mayor, of these families there are those who need a completely new house and those who live in precarious housing that need improvement. He added that the problem is also known to the Government, which included it in its “Programa Mais – Mobilization for the Acceleration of Social Inclusion”, created to put an end to extreme poverty, which covers about 115 thousand families, and to eliminate absolute poverty until end of the legislature (2021–2026).

The most critical situation continues to be the so-called Barracas neighborhood, which emerged with the “boom” of tourism on the island, and as the name itself says, at the beginning most of the houses were of irregular plates, without water networks, electricity or sewer.

According to data from local and national authorities, the neighborhood is home to about 10,000 people, who have arrived in the last 20 years from all the islands and the West African coast to work in hotels, construction or commerce.

With the covid-19 pandemic, Cláudio Mendonça noticed two phenomena that happened in Boa Vista: first, people who lived in a normal situation went to help themselves in the neighborhood to live, because there the income is lower and the situation is more comfortable.

But other people who could not pay rent even in the neighborhood took refuge in other places, also in tents, or in unoccupied houses, which increased the number of tents on the archipelago’s second most touristy island.

Therefore, there is no doubt that the situation in terms of housing on the island “has worsened”, with reports of people who have moved to the spaces where they raise their animals, but also to the municipal dump.

“These are situations that worry us a lot, they worry the Government, and we are working in this direction to relocate people in the housing spaces that are being built”, he advanced.

A total of 200 homes have already been built under the housing program of the previous PAICV government, financed by Portugal through a credit line of 200 million euros.

The mayor is aware that these houses will not solve the housing problem, but rather “minimize it a lot” on the island, where the housing deficit “is very high and there are always people coming in”.

Therefore, the mayor said that the authorities’ work is to solve the existing deficit, but also to work for the future, thinking about the trip of more people to the island, which resumed tourism in October 2021, after months closed because of the pandemic. of covid-19.

Still in the neighborhood that residents are trying to rename Boa Esperança, Cláudio Mendonça said that in the south and west there are still people who live in a critical situation in terms of houses and there are others who really want to “foster” the construction of tents.

“We had to take some measures that were often not pleasant to prevent the spread of more tin houses and shacks here on the island”, said the mayor, who took office in late 2020, after winning the elections with the support of the African Independence Party of Cape Verde (PAICV). who live in tents on the island of Boa Vista relocated in apartments. The Week with Lusa.

A Semana

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