With the fences not enough to stop them, a wall is coming up in northern France blocking access to the port of Calais for migrants trying to clandestinely cross the Channel to Britain. The initiative however has met with controversy on both shores.
The so-called “anti-intrusion” wall will stretch one km and will be about four meters high and be an extension of high wire fences on each side of the highway leading to the port of Calais.
Made of concrete panels that can be removed when no longer needed, it will be equipped with cameras and a lighting system in order to monitor any attempts to scale over it.
Construction is set to begin this month and should be completed by the end of the year as it is expected to take about 12 weeks to put up the wall and another eight weeks to install the video surveillance and lighting.
Britain has agreed to pay for the construction which is estimated to cost 2.7 million euros. In Calais between 6,900 and 9,000 migrants live in the squalid camp known as the “Jungle,” the biggest slum in France.
Situated near the highway leading to the port, the migrants — mainly men from the Middle East and African nations such as Somalia and Sudan — try to block the lorries on their way to the Channel tunnel or ferries so they can jump on board and hide inside to get across to Britain.
Some elected officials, including Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart, are skeptical. She says there is no need for a wall because the French government has promised to close down the Jungle camp as soon as possible — a move Paris says will be done in stages.
Volunteers from the various charities helping the migrants in the camp of tents and makeshift shelters are mostly opposed to the project as useless and costly.
The Greens in the UK have called it “monstrous” and a Citizens collective has said the money would be better spent to help minors stuck in Calais to be reunited with family in Britain. Richard Burnett, of Britain’s Road Haulage Association, has called the scheme “poor use of taxpayers’ money.”

Source: Arab News