AFP:ALGIERS: Shantytown dwellers in Algiers are faced with an economic “mission impossible” over their country’s April 17 presidential election as they struggle to improve their lot in an oil-rich state.

 

The capital’s wali, or state-appointed provincial governor, has given those who fled to crammed hovels to escape the bloody civil war of the 1990s an impossible choice: vote or forget about being rehoused.

 

“I’ve never missed an election date, but the town hall doesn’t register people living in shantytowns on the [electoral] lists” because they do not have a home address, said Laid, a 62-year-old with a wrinkled face.

 

He has had to use a brother’s address to get on the electoral roll.

 

The wali, Abdelkader Zoukh, warned last week that those who do not vote will not be eligible for new social housing due to be allocated right after polling day.

 

The government says it aims to resolve Algeria’s housing crisis once and for all under the fourth term being sought by incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

 

But critics accuse the wali of resorting to electoral “blackmail.”

 

In the suburbs of Algiers, plush villas of the nouveau riche compete for space with the tin shacks of Algerians who have not benefited from the oil annuities which make their country the wealthiest in North Africa.

 

Nicknamed “ Algiers the White” for the glistening white of its buildings, the capital is ringed by shantytowns with a total of around 60,000 tumbledown homes.

 

The suburb of Ain-Naadja, only a short distance from the presidential offices and the ministries, was built in the 1980s without architectural logic or any urban planning whatsoever.

 

Next to its soulless and ugly apartment blocks stands the shantytown of El Wiam, which looking down from a nearby hill resembles a giant parking lot of satellite dishes and air conditioning units.

 

The electricity grid came to the slums only in 2008. Before that, residents had to rely on dangerous rogue lines or piggy-back off the connections of more well-off neighbors.

 

The neighbors, mostly traders, dream of the day when the eyesore of the shantytown and its human misery is erased from their sight.

 

Families of between four and 11 are piled into a maximum 30 square meters which a coat of paint and cheap tiles turn into a semblance of home. Some have lived this way since early childhood, growing up there before marrying and starting their own families.

 

Abdenour Zouaoui, 25, was only eight when his mother set up camp in El Wiam. Today, he has a child to raise, on his own, following his wife’s death.

 

A 50-year-old native of the Casbah (citadel), the historic Old City, Larbi was resettled in 1988 in a three-bedroom flat along with 15 family members. Ten years later, he and his wife and children set themselves up in El Wiam.

 

“I couldn’t wait any longer. My children have grown up, and the oldest is 19. I hope to leave behind his suffering as soon as possible to save the two youngest,” he sighed. “My first four failed at school because of these living conditions.”