Morocco Earthquake Survivors Protest Aid Delays, Appeal to King for Help

While a group called the Coordination of Victims of the Amizmiz Earthquake, a village of 14,299 inhabitants according to the last census, has canceled a protest it was organizing on Tuesday to protest "the persistent shortcomings and ambiguity of the government in terms of financial aid and reconstruction plans", after meeting with local authorities, hundreds of people took to the streets. They chanted slogans hostile to the government of Aziz Akhannouch. "Amizmiz is in trouble" in Tashelhiyt. "Long live the king," the protesters also chanted. They implore the sovereign to go to Amizmiz to verify how the local authorities are implementing his decrees.

The protesters claim not to have yet received the emergency aid announced by the royal cabinet of King Mohammed VI following the violent earthquake that shook Morocco on September 8, even though local officials have already collected phone numbers to transfer the funds. "For many, the delays that followed have been the straw that broke the camel’s back," Mohamed Belhassan, coordinator of the group, told Hespress, warning that the condition of the camps where the earthquake survivors live "is catastrophic".

The delays in the distribution of emergency aid in Amizmiz will be very detrimental to these survivors who are already struggling to survive the gusts of wind and floods hitting Morocco, as their tents do not withstand the bad weather. They fear the worst with the arrival of the snow season. A cyclical phenomenon. Every year, in November, violent snowstorms block the roads of isolated villages, isolating for weeks more than 1,000 villages in the Atlas, without access to electricity, hospitals and schools.