Morocco ignores the vaccination of undocumented migrants in the country, even though it is one of the first countries to have a vaccination program in Africa. There was no official decision on the matter, even though tens of thousands of legal foreign residents have been vaccinated, according to a statement from an official from the Ministry of Health responsible for the vaccination campaign.
The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged Morocco’s tourism sector and led to reduced industrial exports. The country hopes the inoculation program will help its economy recover.
Its vaccination rate of 14 doses per 100 people has surpassed the much richer France and Italy.
So far, the program has focused on doctors, other key workers, the elderly and those with chronic illnesses, but the government has a stated goal of achieving herd immunity this summer.
It has received 8.5 million doses, including 7 million from AstraZeneca and 1 million from China’s Sinopharm, and is also expected to approve Russia’s Sputnik vaccine.
“As the demand for vaccines exceeds the supply (globally), we made sure to anticipate our needs and maintain the vaccine supply without interruption,” said official Abdelhakim Yahyane.
Some groups that promote the rights of immigrants said that it can be expensive to miss undocumented migrants.
“The cost of not including undocumented migrants in the vaccination campaign is higher than the cost of the vaccine,” said Younes Faudel, head of the Papiers pour Tous group.
Morocco, located 14 kilometers from Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar, has long been home to a large group of African migrants who want to reach Europe.
Although it has provided housing for more than 50,000 of them since 2013 as part of a broader effort to build sub-Saharan alliances, a large number remain without formal paperwork.
“We all take the same buses and taxis and go to the same restaurants and markets,” said Franck Iyanka, a Congolese citizen of the ODT union, urging the authorities to include undocumented migrants in their plans.
His union is one of several groups in Morocco that joined last week to urge the state to extend its residence to more migrants by issuing temporary documentation.
There are no official figures for the number of undocumented migrants in Morocco. Iyanka said there were at least 20,000.
Conde Cema, a Guinean security guard in Rabat who has already unsuccessfully tried to cross to Europe twice, said he wanted to be vaccinated but could not because his residence permit had expired and his employer had not renewed his employment contract.
“I am willing to take the vaccine but without a valid residence card number I can not register for it,” says the 36-year-old, who has an 11-month-old baby.
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