Ajaccio (AFP)

Despite the confinement, Laurent Lefloch did not want to wait. After paying social benefits overnight, it was the first Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at his bank branch in Les Salines, a working-class district of Ajaccio, to receive his disabled adult allowance.

"Usually, I leave a part of it on the account but there, since the government says that you have to stay at home, I take everything," explains the 40-year-old cook, before withdrawing at the counter of his Crédit Agricole agency 900 euros. "I don't want to take any risks, I'm going to do the shopping and I'm going home, it's an absolute", confides the one who is also a singer of Corsican polyphonies and who is preparing "to sing the masses of the dead + H24 + after this pandemic. "

Behind him, a man wishing to remain anonymous also comes to withdraw "his disabled adult allowance": "Every month, I take everything from the start," he said, patiently.

Like them, many recipients of social benefits - income from active solidarity (RSA), family allowances, housing, disabled allowance, activity bonus ... - began to withdraw their money on Saturday in Corsica, one of the regions the poorest in mainland France, with one in five inhabitants living below the poverty line.

In total, more than 4 million households, representing 7 million people, receive social minima in France and the government has advanced to Saturday rather than Monday their payment. Among the beneficiaries, more than half are customers of the Postal Bank and 1.5 million come to withdraw their cash allowances at post offices each month, said the public group in a statement.

If on Saturday, the post offices are all closed in Corsica, the distributors have been filled and the limits for withdrawing bank cards have been raised from 500 or 800 euros to 1,500 euros, the regional directorate told AFP, adding that 65% of beneficiaries had cards to withdraw from ATMs.

- "Economic Covid" -

As of Monday, 70 of the 190 post offices and contact points in town halls will be open across the island, up from 20 since the start of the crisis, she added.

At Crédit Agricole, the leading bank in Corsica with 110,000 customers out of 340,000 inhabitants, the 27 branches on the island have remained open to the public every morning from 9.30 a.m. to 12 p.m. since the start of confinement. "We are looking for all solutions to show our solidarity with the suffering economy", assures AFP the director general for Corsica, Jean-Pierre Guillou, who fears "an economic Covid".

At the Salines agency on Saturday morning, a handful of customers queued outside at a good distance from each other under a beautiful sun. Elisabeth Micheli, the deputy director, welcomes them, protected by a plexiglass window. "We mainly have withdrawals and transfers abroad, Portugal and Sardinia," she explains, disinfecting the counter.

Masked and gloved, Abdallah Elmoden, a construction worker, came to make a transfer to pay his rent and another 300 euros for his son on the continent.

"These are people who are not necessarily up to date with new technologies, they appreciate that we are there to help them", explains Micheli who receives "a lot of encouragement" and has the feeling that working during confinement "has tightened links "with colleagues. "We pay attention to each other," she said.

"The virus, we think about it all the time," adds Claudine Gregot, consultant. "Two people in my portfolio died so inevitably, it affects us," she says, ensuring facilitate larger withdrawals even to reimburse overdraft fees. "Our course of action is not to push people into this already complicated period."

"I don't see people going to the balcony to applaud us at 8:00 pm", recognizes the director of the agency, Jean-Dominique Fabiani: "But when I see the number of daily visits, calls, emails, I think that we are useful ".

© 2020 AFP