Casablanca’s Administrative Police Struggle to Curb Urban Disorder Two Years After Launch

According to the daily Assabah, the municipal administrative police has a negative record two years after its creation, if one considers the proliferation of unsanitary markets and the occupation of the public domain in the Moroccan metropolis.

Right from the start of its activities, especially during the six-month pilot phase carried out in five districts of the metropolis, the administrative police unit had aroused enormous hopes among the people of Casablanca, notes the newspaper, noting that this police was supposed to bring significant improvements in terms of hygiene, public cleanliness and sanitation, urban planning and public domain occupation.

But nearly two years later, the fruits have not lived up to the promise of the flowers, cuts the publication, while noting that the situation has worsened with an acute growth of public domain occupation and the emergence of unsanitary housing, in strict violation of the law.

The newspaper notes that the situation also persists in terms of health and public safety, as well as hygiene. This, "as if this municipal administrative police had never existed," grumbles the daily, which also notes that it has reduced its actions to five prefectures of the city and only to the monitoring of construction sites.

The same source notes that the absence of this police in the recent campaign against the illegal exploitation of parking lots, the blackmail suffered by citizens and the violence recorded with the authorities, are eloquent proofs of its abdication in the face of the challenges it was confronted with.

Officially launched on July 4, 2019 with 150 already trained agents, the municipal administrative police was supposed to carry out hygiene, environmental protection and cleanliness controls at the level of all the districts of the economic capital of the kingdom. The staff was to be doubled in 2020 and reinforced by agents stationed at the district level.