Moroccan Border City Fnideq Faces Economic Crisis, Residents Demand Recovery Plan

About a hundred personalities residing in or from the Moroccan city of Fnideq, two kilometers south of Ceuta, have signed a petition to ask the Moroccan government to save the population from the "serious economic crisis" caused by the closure of the borders with Ceuta.

In this document, civil society deplores the fact that the inhabitants of Fnideq (77,000 inhabitants) have experienced "a terrible deterioration" in their standard of living over the past three years. A situation that has worsened with the end of cross-border trade in October 2019 and the closure of borders in March 2020 due to the health crisis.

The civil society of Fnideq therefore calls for the implementation of an "urgent economic recovery plan to save the city". This plan must necessarily include the reopening of borders, the acceleration of the construction of the Fnideq free zone and the integration of the population into the economic fabric of the neighboring port of Tanger Med, which became, at the end of 2020, the first port in the entire Mediterranean area in terms of container volume.

"This is a heartfelt cry that we are launching to the authorities. Social tension is at its peak," said lawyer Mohamed Abgar, one of the coordinators of this initiative, who deplored the consequences of the economic crisis in Fnideq, including the illegal immigration of young people to Spain and the many deaths recorded at sea.