Social housing or bourgeois housing ?

Arimi Choubadé’s editorial

300 thousand FCFA to be paid per month on 17 years to become the owner of so-called social housing in Ouèdo for a C3. Or 43,7 million FCFA in cash in a country where the minimum wage is 52 thousand FCFA. No need to further confuse the reader with migraine-inducing figures. What we must simply remember is that the government has supported housing projects which automatically exclude minimum wage, low earner, teachers, nurses, workers, peasants, etc…. You must have more than a million monthly income to hope to benefit from the operation. The “highly” social to the detriment of the modestly social.

In the scale of magnitude where billionaires are in power, social becomes pleasure for millionaires. Poverty becomes a fault or even a self-exclusion. Once again, national solidarity does not take into account those who do not have any in the safes... They must continue to hang out in unsanitary rentals, at the mercy of increasingly crooked and persecuting donors. The same goes for small civil servants in the public administration, the forgotten billionaires.

It is appropriate to question the relevance of the creation of a Minister of Living Environment. A few months before the end of his reign and after almost 9 years of existence of this Ministry, we can legitimately ask the question of knowing what has changed in the living environment of Beninese people in general. An umpteenth time, everything was limited to the demagoguery of promises of figures for social housing to be built in 5 years. who are in the earth… I bring them back to life… It is a work of memory conservation that I do, 10 years in addition to the bonus of 45 days, nothing has really changed. Like before, the famous accommodations are there, in small quantities and overpriced with a lot of noise around.

Commercialism regarding this housing is a great obstacle to the progress envisaged with regard to the living and working conditions of certain categories of agents called upon to essential functions of development, namely education., health, even security. We always wonder why government efforts in housing do not target teachers, nurses, office workers, the workers, etc.

otherwise, despite all the hype about the social aspect of housing which is not one, the relevance of the Ouèdo site is far from obvious. It is an open secret to see how much effort the city of Abomey-Calavi goes to to assume the status of a dormitory town for Cotonou, particularly in terms of mobility.. The only crossing bridge is dying in a state of disrepair like no other, creating endless traffic jams during rush hours..

That the regime of billionaires focuses more on social issues towards the poor than towards the rich !