Over 1,000 migrants are still scattered across the region and the numbers are growing, with 600 now living around Calais
By Anna Pujol-Mazzini
LONDON, May 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Hundreds of migrants have been sleeping in the streets in "disastrous" conditions in northern France with no access to tents, showers or water since a fire ravaged the country's last major refugee camp, a charity said on Wednesday.
A fire destroyed most of the Grande-Synthe migrant camp near Dunkirk last month after fighting broke out.
While authorities say they have now rehoused most of the more than 1,100 people who sheltered at Grande-Synthe at locations across the country, hundreds have stayed in the area in squalid conditions and dependent on aid to survive, French charity L'Auberge des Migrants said.
"These people are on the streets, with only a cover to sleep with, with no toilets or showers," Maya Konforti, who works for L'Auberge des Migrants, said.
"Everything is done to discourage refugees from being there," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone, adding there was "constant harassment" of migrants and aid workers.
Grande-Synthe was home to one of the largest groups of migrants on the French coast seeking to reach Britain since the sprawling "Jungle" shanty town outside the nearby port of Calais was shut down last October.
France then moved more than 6,000 migrants, many fleeing poverty and war in their homelands, from the makeshift camp to reception centres around the country to calm growing local anger.
Most of the migrants left home to smuggle themselves across the Channel to Britain, drawn by family and contacts already there and the prospect of jobs.
Over 1,000 migrants are still scattered across the region and the numbers are growing, with 600 now living around Calais, Konforti said.
Her charity distributes around 1,000 meals a day in Calais alone, she added.
A spokesman for the regional government in Calais told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the number of migrants still in the region was lower at an estimated 250 to 300 people.
The spokesman did not comment further.
Aid groups in the Calais region have faced many challenges from local authorities, from a ban on gatherings which affected food distributions to a ban on distributing tents.
(Reporting by Anna Pujol-Mazzini @annapmzn, Editing by Astrid Zweynert @azweynert. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
