Paris suburb mayor bans bin-scrounging

Nogent Mayor Jacques Jean-Paul Martin, of President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party, says the move is in the interest of public health and safety, but some members of the town council accuse him of discriminating against poor people.

The new bylaw, which came into effect at the beginning of October, carries a 38-euro-fine for anyone found guilty of going through dustbins. It also forbids people from spitting, urinating and in any way soiling public footpaths. Marketplaces are exempt from the new law.

Martin claims dustbins are being emptied onto the streets of the town by people searching for items that can then be sold.

“These are not people looking for food,” he said denying claims he was targeting the town’s poorer citizens. “There are structures in place to help people in need.”

William Geib, a Communist Party councillor, was quick to condemn the new legislation.

“It’s clearly a way for the mayor to up the ante,” he told the French news agency. “The only thing that needs to be done now is to quite simply ban poverty altogether in Nogent.”

Martin is not the first of France’s mayors to introduce such a law.

In August the mayor of La Madeleine in the north of the country took the same initiative and had the declaration of the ban translated into Romanian and Bulgarian.