Volunteers from “Restos du Coeur” distribute food at the Vélodrome stadium in Marseille, March 26, 2021 (AFP/Archives/Nicolas TUCAT)
More than a month after the cry of alarm launched by the Restos du Coeur, the associations fighting against poverty are once again warning about their situation and that of precarious populations, believing that they have not been heard by the government.
“It’s cracking everywhere,” told AFP Pascal Brice, president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS), which brings together some 800 associations fighting against precariousness and at the origin of a call for mobilization Thursday.
“The call from Restos du coeur highlighted this: we have situations of precariousness which are spreading and getting worse and we have associations which are exhausted and lacking resources,” adds he. He describes the “situation of people and the capacity of associations to cope” as “very worrying”.
In a context of high inflation, associations have been warning for several months about the sharp increase in requests for aid and the increase in their operating expenses, which are plunging — for some — their accounts into the red.
The Restos du Coeur, which provides 35% of food aid in France, made an impression at the beginning of September, by warning that they would be forced to restrict the number of their beneficiaries this winter.
In this tense context, the executive unveiled on September 18 its new strategy to combat poverty which should, according to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, “respond to the urgency of the current social situation” and “correct inequalities structural”.
Measures which go in the right direction but which remain very insufficient, according to those involved in the field. “Very clearly, the response is not up to par,” underlines Pascal Brice, whose Federation is calling for “two emergency measures”: an increase in social minimums and “an indexing of association funding to price increases “.
In total, around a hundred meetings are planned throughout France on Thursday “to make the voices of precarious people, social workers and associations heard,” adds the president of the FAS.
More than nine million people live below the poverty line in France, or with less than 1,120 euros per month for a single person, according to 2020 data from the National Institute of Statistics (Insee).
© 2023 AFP
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