Beach Chaos in Morocco: Illegal Profiteering Ruins Summer for Tourists and Locals

The summer season is a period when lobbies and intermediaries take advantage to impose their rules in vacation spots. They "force vacationers to pay up before even setting foot on the beach sand and profiting from the sea waters and their atmosphere," reports Al Akhbar. Thus, they deprive the municipal finances of significant revenue with the complicity of certain elected officials and local authorities. "Even the operators who have an authorization for the use of the space only pay the municipality a sum of four dirhams per square meter, in accordance with the decree of the Ministry of Equipment, despite the recommendations and observations of the Court of Auditors on this subject," the same source points out.

These lobbies and intermediaries are responsible for the illegal exploitation of the maritime domain through temporary authorizations, "often issued for electoral purposes." In total, 1000 authorizations for the occupation and exploitation of the public maritime domain are issued by the supervisory ministry during the summer season, which runs from June 15 to September 15, in addition to other authorizations related to investments in tourism projects. However, this process does not take into account the recommendations of the reports of the Court of Auditors. The latter has never ceased to call on the supervisory ministry to modernize the legal framework governing the management of the public maritime domain.