2023-09-02 06:08:00
The associative sector reacts with “dismay” to the police operations carried out near the Gare du Midi last Saturday and this Thursday. “The political frenzy around the Midi zone leaves us in a very complicated situation”, explains Charlotte Bonbled, project manager within the ASBL Dune which helps drug users in the public space.
New police operation at the Gare du Midi: “It’s appalling”
“The nuisances have been known for many years and concern all major stations, metro stations and all public spaces. This is linked to the explosion of precariousness in Brussels in particular. The figures are alarming In two years, the number of homeless people has increased from 5,000 to 7,000 people.Last year, we were close to 40% of people who face a risk of precariousness and social exclusion.If we anticipate the statistics, a one in two will face a risk of great precariousness in a few years”, she warns.
From now on, the politician organizes repressive actions in order to bring order to the surroundings of the Gare du Midi, but this method is considered counter-productive. “This Thursday, we were on the ground to warn our audiences of the police operation and politely tell them to move. We are in a climate of total bewilderment! These operations contribute to shifting the problem elsewhere and since then we have lost contact with the people we are helping. We don’t know where they are although we had a clear view before Thursday’s operation. We hear the neighboring municipalities complaining regarding the arrival of homeless people, to this is added the measure taken by the Secretary of State in charge of Asylum and Migration to lengthen the line of homeless people while ‘there are not enough reception facilities. The government is completely out of control!” castigates Charlotte Bonbled.
“We have been alerting politicians for years to the extremely difficult conditions in which we work, the explosion of mental health, our staff completely exhausted”
She deplores the chronic disinvestment from which the voluntary sector suffers. “We have been alerting politicians for years to the extremely difficult conditions in which we work, the explosion of mental health, our staff completely exhausted, the front line structures completely saturated, the accommodation places are counted on the end of the fingers and we are unable to recruit staff to respond to the ever-increasing number of missions. In response to this, the federal government is proposing a repressive solution that is counterproductive. What is needed is to give more resources to the association to offer emergency accommodation solutions worthy of the name”, she specifies.
“The situation is dramatic at the Gare du Midi”: here are the demands of the SNCB
A worrying increase in crack consumption
A symbol of this growing precariousness, the consumption of crack by precarious people is constantly on the rise. “The rise in crack is linked to the rise in cocaine on our territory. It is a product that is the prerogative of the most impoverished populations who live on the streets. It is a drug of subsistence which allows them to hold on, not to be hungry, to distract themselves from everyday life. Added to this are new drugs on the market such as flakka, a synthetic drug that produces hallucinations. The cocktail is explosive and the situation risks continuing to deteriorate if we do not act in a structural way”, adds Charlotte Bonbled, who recommends drawing inspiration from what is being done abroad, as in Lisbon where the drug addict behavior is decriminalized to make it a public health issue.
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