Coronavirus: in Seine-Saint-Denis, associations facing a new precariousness

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With confinement, many inhabitants of this bordering department of Paris find themselves away from work and see their income greatly reduced. The government has announced emergency food aid of 2.6 million euros which should benefit 25,000 households in the 93.

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In 20 years, the Rougemont Solidarité association in Sevran has seen 1000 faces of precariousness  : homeless, single mothers, immigrant workers. But with this confinement, something changed for Cherifa Bounoua, the coordinator: “  People who had fixed-term contracts, people who were temporary workers, these lost their jobs, even the partial unemployment of self-employed entrepreneurs, explains- he.  So the number gets bigger. It's simple, we started with fifty homeless people, and not even fifteen families at the start, there we reach almost 200 people.  "

The government's aid plan is supposed to respond to this emergency through the town halls. But it is the post-containment that worries the most Victorin Gokpon, a figure in local entrepreneurship: "  If we add health problems to economic problems, to employment problems, the situation has become explosive," he warns. The state must wake up in these neighborhoods. Me, I imagine an unemployment rate around the month of September which will double. We are going to be 20% unemployed. So that means that the situation in the neighborhoods will get even worse. So you have to anticipate all this and unfortunately, you can only appeal to the state. "

And the entrepreneur to wonder: rather than sprinkling, why not seize the exceptional circumstances to finally commit massive investments in the economy of the districts.

► Also read : Containment : night of tensions in the Parisian suburbs

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• France
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• Poverty

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