2023-09-03 04:00:00
Dozens of caravans are installed for the second consecutive year in a field of Perwez, in Walloon Brabant. Farmers complain of losses in their crops. Travelers feel that they have no other solutions. All our interlocutors denounce the inaction of politicians.
In the middle of the fields of Perwez are currently 80 caravans. A community of Travelers arrived in a meadow in the town a week ago.
She had an agreement to settle in a plot, but not in the space next door. Given the number of caravans, the group overflows onto the meadow of Cédric Vannieuwenhoven and Alexia Baele. “You have a strip ten meters wide that goes all the way around the earth. There won’t be much left here in a month“, reacts Alexia Baele.
The presence of Travelers impacts farmers. “We have no income coming out of it, quite the contrary. We have to take out money once more to buy food for our cattle. It wasn’t money for that, so we gotta dip into the budget for something that shouldn’t have been.“, explains the farmer. At issue: they will have to buy back hay that they might have harvested on their land.
It is high time for politicians to do what is necessary
Cédric and Alexia had already experienced the same situation last year. It had then cost them around 5,000 euros. “I’m also worried regarding all the caravan releases. Whether it’s the toilets, the laundry machines. We also have standards and there nobody intervenes“, confides for his part Cédric. “I think we should develop adequate land for these people. I think it is high time for politicians to do what is necessary at this level.“.
For farmers, the culprits are politicians. Because they knew that the Travelers would return.
The problems are always the same
Our team interviewed the community present on the ground. According to his representative, there was no choice but to settle in the field. “There is no solution to say to welcome travellers. If we are here, it is by obligation. For what? Because the municipalities have nothing to say regarding receiving travellers. The issues are always the same, and it will be the same until there is real progress“, says Etienne Charpentier, president of the National Committee of Travelers.
Their request is to develop more reception areas for the 20,000 Travelers present in Belgium. They say they are open to dialogue to avoid this kind of situation in the future.
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