Friday, March 29, 2019

The Catastrophic State of Public services in France by Wladimir Garcin-Berson

Le Figaro ,Updated on 12/03/2019 at 18:25 Published on 12/03/2019 at 09:35



In its annual report, the institution headed by Jacques Toubon is worried about the alarming state of public services in France, and recalls that their gradual disappearance can only increase the anger that rises territories, especially rural.

This is an irrevocable fact: in France, public services are in disrepair, especially in rural areas, putting users on the wall. In its annual report published Tuesday, the Defender of Rights warns of the "decline of public services" increasingly perceptible throughout the territory, even as a "policy of strengthening security and repression against the threat of terrorism "Unfolds in parallel. This abandonment of citizens can fuel anger that subsequently explode in the street, such as "yellow vests," said the representative of the institution, Jacques Toubon, in this document rich in lessons.

Justice, hospitals, medicine ... For the Defender of Rights, public services are victims of a "growing evanescence", at the national and local levels. "Remote", "withdrawn", "unable to manage complex situations" and poorly established in the territory, they no longer meet the needs of users, too often melt in silence and close gradually, victims of a logic of budgetary economy. "In many cases, the difficulties that users have to overcome" are similar to "less failures than obstacles" set up "more or less deliberately by the public authorities", the report is astonished. These successive genes widen the distance between users and public authorities and considerably complicate the lives of citizens. "The user must now demonstrate an ability to" fend for themselves "in his administrative career," notes the document.
This situation, already pointed out in the past, does not settle with the years, quite the opposite: the institution headed by the former minister estimates that it is accelerating, now affecting all territories and all populations. A particularly worrying setback, as public services may be the last - if not the only - recourse of the most fragile individuals: their disappearance therefore creates a risk of "inequalities" and geographical and economic "segregation". Moreover, this evolution leaves the door open to a "worrying regression of fundamental rights" of which the citizens would be the first victims.
A distance more and more perceptible

This distance provokes the anger of the users, who are more and more numerous to appeal to the Defender of Rights to bring their demands. Its services received 95,836 claim files, a number that increased by 6.1% over the year and 13% over two years only. Utility complaints represent an overwhelming majority of the claims received by Defender teams, representing 93% of the total. They can affect various areas, such as the delay in the payment of certain pensions or the extension of "medical deserts".

Completely outdated, public services can no longer manage the demands expressed by citizens, says the text, which cites the example of retirement pensions: "insured persons have been waiting for the effective liquidation of their benefit several months after their cessation of activity, which, for those with modest incomes, may have posed insurmountable difficulties ".

The halftone balance sheet of dematerialization

The report also highlights the inequalities in the Internet coverage of the territory: while the government wants to accelerate the dematerialization of the public service, especially for a financial purpose, the institution considers that this transformation may leave a non-negligible number of citizens on the Internet. tile. Today, 7.5 million people are threatened with "digital exclusion": without a quality internet network, they will not be able to benefit fully from these online services. We must therefore accompany people to digital, especially in small towns, and keep "physical reception areas of users," advises the document.

Quoted in the report, the general delegate for mediation with the public services, Bernard Dreyfus, relies on the example of the digitization of the issue of gray cards, which produced "calamitous effects". The man holds very harsh words against this evolution, victim of a "huge failure" depriving "hundreds of thousands" of French titles for "several months". If the internet can be a way to reconnect citizens with their public services, the thing can not be done in a cost reduction logic, on pain of being a "palliative" insufficient or even counterproductive, notes the text.
The rising anger of the French

And the consequences of the gradual abandonment of territories by public services do not stop there: questioned by AFP, Jacques Toubon explains that the demands of users reflect "the feeling of injustice and inequality" felt by a increasing part of the population, forced to travel many kilometers to access basic services. The former minister reminds that this is one of the main drivers of the movement of "yellow vests", and that this situation is not new: it is the fruit of long years of evolution.

The pursuit of this logic can, therefore, only fuel the fire. "By gradually fading away, the public services that, in France, constitute an essential element of the consent to the tax, hypothesize the redistribution of wealth and the feeling of solidarity", worries Jacques Toubon, resuming a preoccupation already formulated by several elected officials. The high official warns even on a dynamic that undermines "progressively social cohesion" between citizens.


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