President Kaïs Saïed ordered a mission “joint and urgent” in the Gabès chemical complex. One more announcement for a region which has been suffocating for forty years under phosphate fumes and broken promises.
In Gabès, the pollution routine repeats itself.
Two days after new respiratory problems in a college in Chatt Essalem, Kaïs Saïed charged Fatma Thabet ChiboubMinister of Industry, Mines and Energy, and Habib AbidMinister of the Environment, to dispatch a joint team in Gabès, according to a press release from the presidency.
The head of state claims to monitor the situation “continuously” and demands that “everything be repaired as quickly as possible”.
Thursday, several asphyxiated students had been rushed to the Gabès university hospital.
The residents have blocked the road leading to the Tunisian chemical group complexdenouncing a state silence that has become unbearable.
A month earlier, at Ghannoucharound thirty people had already been poisoned after a gas leak.
At the end of September, Kaïs Saïed denounced “the assassination of the environment and health” during a crisis meeting in Carthage.
He then mentioned the idea of a strategy “inspired by the proposals formulated by the youth of Gabès more than a decade ago”.
Also read: Gabès: Kaïs Saïed denounces “the assassination of the environment and health”
In the press release of October 11the president reaffirmed that “no tolerance will be granted to those who have failed in their duties” and warned against “any attempt at recovery or overbidding, coming from inside or outside”.
He assured that “the inhabitants of Gabès will receive their full rights”, describing them as “the wealth and the rampart of the new Tunisia”.
Also read: Gabès: Anger in Chatt Essalem after new cases of asphyxiation
