Le Figaro Nantes
It is a request
“which had almost become
a fight
for six months”
.
It has just been approved this Monday, to the great satisfaction of Nicolas Toquec, FO Naolib Semitan union delegate.
And above all for the greatest relief of employees.
From Tuesday, bus drivers will no longer carry out their regulation at the Mendès France - Bellevue stop, terminus of five lines and place of passage of the tramway.
Until now, they stopped there for a few minutes at the end of their journey before leaving.
However, this place is feared by drivers due to growing insecurity linked to drug trafficking.
In October, a young man was shot in front of a business, pushing the mixed economy public transport company in the Nantes metropolitan area (Semitan) to temporarily shift the drivers' terminal during the end-of-year holidays, in the evening .
In January, a bus was targeted by pellet gunfire, and more recently, the explosion of a fireworks rekindled fears.
But the unions' suggestions had not been taken into account.
Place of regulation moved for 3 years
We had to wait for a new incident this weekend for them to be.
Late Saturday afternoon, the bus of a line 23 driver was targeted by paintball fire in Aquitaine, at a stop near Mendès France - Bellevue.
Individuals on scooters shot at the windshield and at the tram station.
This umpteenth incident led to a solidarity movement among drivers, leading to the total interruption of transport traffic today in Nantes.
Faced with this crisis situation, and at the end of a meeting Monday afternoon between management, elected officials and unions, it was decided that the place of regulation be moved a few hundred meters further, to Jamet, "
in initially, while awaiting a study of another, more suitable place of regulation
,” Semitan said in a press release sent this Monday evening.
And this for a period of three years, the time of work on Grand Bellevue, a priority district currently being redeveloped.
“This place is currently under construction and the buildings which served as shelters for drug dealers no longer exist,”
emphasizes Didier Sauvêtre, CFDT delegate of Semitan, with concern.
The dealers have repatriated to the tram platform, where the buses pass.
At times, there can be fights between dealers, gunfire
.
He hopes for more police presence.
“It was also requested that there be more on-board personnel from the transport intervention section.
It makes a presence and comforts colleagues,”
says Nicolas Toquec, FO representative.
Resumption of traffic Tuesday
At the end of these discussions, Semitan announced that
“the network will operate normally tomorrow Tuesday March 19”
.
However, partial line cuts will be expected in the city center between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. due to demonstrations.
In a press release sent this evening, elected officials from the Mieux Vivre group in Nantes (the local right-wing opposition) regret this chain of events, which according to them could have been avoided.
“Honest people and hard-working taxpayers are deprived of transport and pay the price for complacent laxity towards the small minority of those who ruin the daily lives of residents and workers
,” they deplore.
And Laurence Garnier, opposition leader and senator LR, to ask the mayor, the prosecutor and the prefect, to study the possibility
of “expelling delinquents from social housing”
in this neighborhood.
This Monday evening, at 6:30 p.m., a meeting on progress in terms of security in the Mendès-France sector had been scheduled for several days in the presence of elected officials from Saint-Herblain and Nantes, as well as the prosecutor and the police services. police.
A funny coincidence of timing.