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"Remote", "withdrawn", "unable to manage complex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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