"It was time to do something in Marseille!" After more than a month of anti-coronavirus confinement, the mayor of the Marseille city, Jean-Claude Gaudin, decided to restart the school kitchens to distribute free 5,000 meals a day to the poorest people targeted by local associations. A measure welcomed by Florent Houdemont, from the Marseille branch of the Abbé Pierre Foundation.
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"Real cases of people who have nothing left to eat"
"We have huge food needs everywhere," he said at the microphone of Europe 1. "With confinement, a whole section of the economy is stopped, many people temporary or end of fixed-term contract, but also sometimes the informal economy, moonlighting. " A "brutal stop" that tipped "many homes that barely had their heads above the water in very precariousness, with real cases of people who have nothing to eat", reports he.
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A "good measure"
"Immense needs" therefore, even if they remain "difficult to quantify", and a "good measure" according to Florent Houdemont, who "hopes it will be enough". This distribution will be implemented within ten days, the time for the Sodexo company to restart its central kitchen, to call back the staff, to organize the necessary sanitary measures, without forgetting the restocking food.
This device is in addition to that targeting the approximately 2,000 Marseille children who benefited from the free free canteen before confinement, since replaced by a check for 100 euros.