Paris (AFP)
The leader of the LR opposition deputies, Damien Abad, castigates the State on Saturday evening for its "lack of anticipation", believing that it has been "supplanted by the supermarkets", who claimed to have "secured" several hundred million masks on sale as of Monday.
"How is it that the French state is supplanted by supermarkets and that it has not been possible to pre-empt orders for masks, and stocks to distribute them to masseurs, dentists, midwives, liberal nurses. .. to all those who lacked a mask and had to manage the shortage on a daily basis? ", questions the AFP deputy.
"It is not a question of questioning large areas", assures the elected official, "but what is incomprehensible is that Carrefour and Leclerc are more powerful than the State" and "have the capacity to make massive orders. "
Between "customs clearance times" and "transport times", the hundreds of millions of masks promised by mass retailers "were not made in 48 hours", further irritates Mr. Abad.
Maintaining that these orders were placed about ten days ago, at least, the deputy considers that the government showed "a lack of anticipation and could have preempted a part of these stocks".
The objective is to "know if the large distribution had stocks, which is almost obligatory, and if it had them, how is it that the State did not pre-empt?", He continues.
The boss of the deputies LR calls "the government to seize the DGCCRF (Direction general of the Competition, the Consumption and the Repression of the frauds, Editor's note) and to ask for the purchase orders and delivery notes".
The Carrefour and Leclerc groups, which, like all large retailers, will be able to sell masks from May 4, have announced that they have secured 225 million masks (including 175 million so-called "surgical") and 170 million (only "surgical") respectively. .
"Large retailers have announced not mask stocks, but mask orders," relativized earlier the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, after the Council of Ministers, adding that "large retailers (him) says today (Saturday, editor's note) have 5 or 10 million masks equivalent. " "We are very far from the 500 million" imported in particular by the state, he said.
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