HIBAPRESS – Abdellatif Baraka
The "Oziwa" area in the Oulouz district, north of the city of Taroudant, is witnessing a worrying escalation of the phenomenon of sand theft from valleys, in a scene that reflects the growing illegal exploitation of natural resources within a number of rural areas, especially in the Douar Imirkn, which belongs to the Tissras community led by Oziwa.
According to consistent data from the region's residents, trucks and sand extraction machinery are active day and night in a number of douars, including "Tarka Naabo, Tamardout, Tzmarant, Takadirt, Imougiren, Imidher, Adhar, Adbdi, Amzawrou and Taferent, in the absence of a noticeable presence of authorities to deter effectively and limit this environmental bleeding. Local actors confirm that the indiscriminate scraping operations of the region's valleys leave direct effects on the safety of the natural environment and the hydrological structure of the valleys, which increases the risks of erosion and erosion and weakens the soil's ability to absorb rainwater, in addition to threatening the water tables and exacerbating the fragility of rural roads due to the passage of heavy trucks. These practices also contribute to the damage of public water property and deprive the communities of potential resources that could have been managed within an organized legal framework subject to licensing and environmental monitoring. This situation raises burning questions about the roles of the monitoring and deterrence services of the Oulouz gendarmerie and its local authorities, in light of the circulation of data on the continuation of the activity despite separate complaints from the residents. The affected people demand the intensification of patrols, the seizure of violating machinery, and the activation of judicial follow-up against those involved, in addition to developing an urgent plan to rehabilitate the damaged sections of the valleys, and adopting legal alternatives to supply construction sites with sand through licensed channels that respect sustainability conditions, as they call for the involvement of civil society and elected officials in following up on this sensitive environmental file, in order to protect natural resources and preserve the security of the population and its ecological environment.
