Southern provinces inhabitants expound grievances to ministerial delegation
Representatives of unemployed graduates, local inhabitants and disabled persons from the Moroccan southern city of Laayoune have expounded their problems and grievances to a ministerial delegation that visited the city following instruction by King Mohammed VI.
The delegates renewed attachment to Morocco and to the Alawit throne.
Jobless graduates and students of the city took to the street last week to claim jobs, scholarships, adequate transportation means between places of residence and universities and other social claims.
Delegates said their grievances are exclusively social and duly fall within the frame of citizens' rights and duties. They denounced manipulation of these claims by the enemies of Morocco's territorial integrity.
They equally voiced satisfaction over the decision made by King Mohammed VI to set up a Royal Commission to follow up Saharan affairs and requested that the Sahrawi youth be associated to the commission.
The royal Sahara affairs follow-up commission, whose setting up was announced last September, will comprise figures from the Sahara, representatives of the population and civil and military personalities.
The Commission will examine questions related to the southern provinces at all levels.
Representatives of the students of the province who are attending universities and institutes in remote parts requested that they be granted additional allowances to enable them carry on their studies in better conditions.
In this respect and upon the instruction of King Mohammed VI, the students from the southern provinces will be granted scholarships and reduced air travel fares on the Casablanca-Laayoune, Casablanca-Dakhla and Laayoune-Agadir lines.
The students will equally travel free on land transportation means during holidays and national days.
Some 2,000 students from the southern provinces enroll every year in the various universities across the country. Their number did not exceed the dozen in the seventies. The southern provinces-- formerly under Spanish rule-- were retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid Accords.
The ministerial delegation--including the ministers of the interior, of foreign affairs and cooperation, of social development and employment, of transport, of higher education, and of general affairs-- visited the region upon instructions of King Mohammed VI and held a series of meetings to address social issues of concern to the inhabitants.
The issues of employment, housing and transport were among the major questions debated at the meetings.
