Deprived of work and access to aid, thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa living in Morocco are struggling to make ends meet under COVID-19 restrictions.
“The misery is across the board,” Collective of sub-Saharan Communities in Morocco head Ousmane Ba said. “Those who worked as vendors are under lockdown without financial resources and the situation is getting worse for illegal migrants living in camps. They can’t go anywhere and non-government organizations can’t come to help them.”
The kingdom has long been a transit country for migrants and refugees seeking a better life in Europe, and it has also become a host country for many.
Photo: AFP
At least 20,000, most from sub-Saharan Africa, are trapped “in a humanitarian emergency,” said Mehdi Alioua of the anti-racism foreigners’ support group GADEM.
Many of them work in the informal sector, which accounts for more than 20 percent of Morocco’s economy, and tend to live precariously — hand to mouth — even in normal times.
Parking attendants, cleaning women without contracts and street vendors lacking social security “are panicking,” and many “do not eat every day,” Alioua said.
To contain the spread of COVID-19, Morocco imposed a lockdown throughout the country and a state of emergency declared on March 20 has been extended until Wednesday next week.
Controls are strict, movement is subject to authorization, and non-compliance is punishable by fines or one to three months in jail.
The most vulnerable are those who are looking to reach Europe by sea or by scaling barriers around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco’s north.
Border closures and movement restrictions imposed under a public health state of emergency have piled new challenges onto the dangerous journey.
While covert crossings into Spain have decreased since the start of the pandemic, many people are still making the trip.
A total of 986 arrivals were recorded between the middle of March and early this month, compared with 1,295 a year earlier, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior said.
Morocco has also progressively become a host country, after launching two “regularization” campaigns for migrants in the past few years.
A migration policy adopted in 2013 led to 50,000 people — mostly from West Africa — receiving residency permits, government figures showed.
Non-government groups estimate that several thousand illegal immigrants are in the kingdom.
Whatever their legal status, members of sub-Saharan communities are suffering the effects of a pandemic-induced economic paralysis.
“People don’t know what to do,” Council of sub-Saharan Migrants in Morocco secretary-general Lokake Aimee said. “Those that didn’t save have problems. They used to go out every day to get money and now they are in trouble.”
The kingdom dispensed financial aid to employees and informal sector workers who lost their jobs amid the crisis, but no such steps were taken for migrants or immigrants.
Those who are legally in the kingdom also do not benefit from the state aid distributed to Moroccans.
“No one in the government had a word for these people, even as Morocco has invested so much in its migration policy,” Alioua said.
Solidarity within the community, the charity sector and Catholic parishes have alleviated some of the burden.
“Today you eat rice, tomorrow pasta, the day after rice,” said Eouani Mambia Morelline, the 40-year-old Congolese head of a collective for migrant women in Morocco. “And then, there are the bills and rents that are piling up ... and who knows when we will get back to normal life.”
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