Morocco cleans up illegal land occupations

In total, more than 138,000 hectares belonging to the soulaliyate communities are being exploited without legal title. This is revealed by a recent report from the Ministry of the Interior. A large-scale operation carried out by the Directorate of Rural Affairs in coordination with the representatives of the soulaliyate communities, the local authorities and the provincial services, made it possible to identify three categories of illegal occupations: by individuals, by public administrations and by local authorities, reports Al Ahdath Al Maghriba.

More than 62,000 plots and agricultural holdings covering 138,000 hectares are currently used by private individuals without right or title, nearly 2,800 hectares spread over 7,855 plots are exploited by public administrations and more than 1,100 hectares without authorization, distributed over more than 3,200 plots are used by local authorities, details the report. This situation has prompted the State to initiate regularization procedures, with mixed results.

While 930 lease contracts have been signed for an area of nearly 3,700 hectares on behalf of individuals, a significant portion of the occupants refuse to cooperate. In total, 4,448 files have been referred to the courts for illegal occupation, covering 14,000 hectares of collective land. On the public administration side, 1,869 files for an area of 552 hectares, estimated at 396 million dirhams, have been validated. As for the local authorities, they have regularized 266 files covering 120 hectares, for a value of 69 million dirhams.

This large-scale operation is explained by the Ministry of the Interior’s desire to preserve the collective land heritage. A project it has been undertaking for several years and which has moreover allowed it to identify more than 6.9 million hectares of soulaliyate lands throughout Morocco, including 75,000 hectares in the first eight months of this year alone. Afterwards, legal and administrative measures have been taken to secure their status. According to the report, the department of Abdelouafi Laftit is also working to strengthen control and monitoring mechanisms. A dedicated computer system for the management of collective lands has been set up. It provides a detailed inventory of the communities’ assets, their legal status, their location and their modes of exploitation. Not to mention the mobilization of the ministry’s legal services to investigate complaints of land dispossession and defend the interests of the communities in court.