08 September,2016 09:13 AM IST | | Agencies
The wall is part of a £17 million package of Anglo-French security measures to stop migrants from boarding lorries
French truckers block the main routes in and out of the port of Calais to call for the closure of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais. Pic/AFP
London: Britain is to begin work on £1.9 million "new big wall" in French port of Calais, to block refugees and migrants jumping on to lorries to cross the English Channel via ferries and enter the UK illegally.
The four-metre-high wall, being dubbed the "Great Wall of Calais", is part of a £17 million package of joint Anglo-French security measures to tighten precautions at the port connecting France and England, UK immigration minister Robert Goodwill told the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee yesterday, soon after scandal-hit Indian-origin MP Keith Vaz had resigned as its chair.
"People are still getting through. We have done the fences. Now we are doing the wall," Goodwill told MPs.
Building on the 1-km-long wall along the Calais ferry port's main dual-carriageway approach road, known as the Rocade, is due to start this month.
The wall will be built in two sections on either side of the road to protect lorries and other vehicles from migrants who have used rocks, shopping trolleys and even tree trunks to try to stop vehicles before climbing aboard.
It is aimed at migrants in the camp called the "Jungle" in Calais, which is home to 9,000 migrants and refugees living in squalid tents and makeshift shelters.
Meanwhile, Richard Burnett, chief executive of the UK's Road Haulage Association, called the wall plan a "poor use of taxpayers' money".
