- Seine-Saint-Denis is facing a serious food crisis linked to that of the coronavirus. Associations have seen a jump in the number of people they welcome.
- This situation of high food insecurity should continue well beyond the gradual deconfinement announced by the government, due in particular to the economic crisis.
- Dionysian actors ask the State for substantial and lasting aid to get these people out of fear of going hungry.
“May 11 will not be a magic wand. Philippe Portmann, secretary general of the Seine-Saint-Denis federation of the Secours populaire, is worried about the near future. The food crisis, intimately linked to that of the coronavirus and which is hitting this Ile-de-France region hard, will not disappear with the start of deconfinement. "People who were on the edge and who fell into food insecurity with confinement, are not going to get out of it like that right away and we will be brought to help them over a long period, he feared. It will take several months for the situation to recover, probably not before 2021. ”
"It will not stop on May 11 because many have no income because of confinement, have seen their work stop," says the Red Cross of Seine-Saint-Denis. And the economic recovery that promises to be complicated will not help matters. "Typically, those who work in catering or culture, they will struggle," says Philippe Portmann. Worse, the 93 may be deconfined later than the other departments. "Given the impact of the epidemic in Seine-Saint-Denis, I expect that the deconfinement will be longer and more strict there," reacted in a press release Stéphane Troussel, the president of the departmental council to Edouard Philippe announcements on Tuesday. And the department anticipates that this "will reinforce food insecurity in the territory".
General increase in needs
Seine-Saint-Denis is already on the brink. "We have quadrupled the number of families we help in our center in Sevran," says the Red Cross. For his part, the head of Secours populaire claims to have "experienced an increase of around 50% in terms of volumes of food distributed and people received". "It's a departmental average but there are places where it has doubled, in Saint-Denis, in La Courneuve, in Pantin", he says. On April 1, the department reopened a central college kitchen to prepare 2,000 meals a day. "Today, we have 6,000 meals that we provide to fifty associations in 26 cities, this is far beyond our first forecasts," says the departmental council.
And above all, the profile of people in difficulty has diversified. "We have precarious workers like temporary workers, temporary workers in the entertainment industry, isolated women with children, students who have lost their extra jobs, migrants", enumerates Philippe Portmann, who concludes: "We have an audience that 'we saw little or no one knocking on our door. "
"We don't see a lot of money coming in"
But for associations, the hardest part comes. "We welcome as long as we can distribute," said the secretary general. But until when ? "We spend but we have no revenue," he worries. The revenues from clearance sales, solidarity initiatives and others are no longer there and are not offset. This will pose a real short-term difficulty for us. "We will continue to distribute food a few weeks after the start of the deconfinement, but we do not hope for much because it will become complicated, warns the Red Cross. We are very dependent on donations, and for example at the start of confinement, we received donations from companies that had ordered meals for their employees, but today, companies no longer have food stocks so it becomes difficult. "
Our file on the coronavirus
Philippe Portman calls on the public authorities to get out of this crisis: “They are asking us to do food distribution, but this is not a lasting solution. We are asked to go but we do not see a lot of money coming from the public authorities. "At the Red Cross, however, we welcome the support of local communities. "We received help from the region and the department so a priori, it should be good, they always knew how to upgrade. "On the side of the department, which recalls that the aid of 60 euros promised to the families of 25,000 college students in Seine-Saint-Denis should arrive at the end of the week or at the beginning of next week, we readily point out the insufficiency of government aid . “What we are asking for is that the State's effort be lasting and not a one-shot . The 150 euros announced by Macron were not sufficient at the time and are not long-term. "
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Coronavirus in Seine-Saint-Denis: Implementation of "aid against food insecurity of 60 euros for 25,000 schoolchildren", announces Stéphane Troussel
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- Covid 19
- Confinement
- Coronavirus
- Deconfinement
- People Relief
- Red Cross
- Paris