The first public meeting organized by the Collective within the framework of the foundations of social policies and integration, took place last Tuesday at Sandy-Ground.
The purpose of these meetings is "to write in connection with the inhabitants a new social policy and integration into the territory while responding to their problematic neighborhood by neighborhood", had explained the morning at the launch of the event, Annick Petrus, the vice-president in charge of the Family Solidarity Pole. She wants to collect everyone's grievances so that she can take action. From the first minutes, she gave the floor to the public who did not fail to deliver her remarks, limiting the interventions of the two speakers invited by the COM.
Erika Sennoaj, social engineer, had started to explain the functioning of public policies and the interest for the population to express themselves by raising their problems with elected officials. "On the one hand we have elected officials who produce policies, decisions and who can continue to produce them even if they do not satisfy the public because on the other we have this public who will not say what is wrong ", Began to explain the engineer, then taking the following image:" when we are hungry, where do we go? " She did not have time to finish her demonstration when a man from the audience interrupted her by saying: "We are hungry but there is nothing to eat ... There is no work, no silver, …".
Frédéric Dumesnil, social mediator and integration in the city of Baie-Mahault and psycho-boxing trainer, and second speaker invited to these meetings, explained to him that he comes from a disadvantaged neighborhood where delinquency was high. “You have to say that the problems have to be solved by us with the help of the community. In our neighborhood, we had problems to solve right away. So we proposed a project, that of creating small businesses. So a car wash went up, then the neighbor saw that it worked and he wanted to open a bakery, and so on. Today our neighborhood is no longer a neighborhood known for its insecurity, ”he said.
But the public did not react to the interventions and preferred to tackle the island's problems in a jumble: lack of bearings in families due to the absence of fathers, lack of education and access to culture , customary rules too little taken into account, lack of consideration of volunteers and associations, local businesses in public markets, etc.
Several interventions focused on employment and poor access to jobs by Saint-Martin residents. The example was taken in reconstruction and restoration: “while the country is in reconstruction, many young people do not work because companies use foreign labor. (…) Metropolitan residents who may have been there for twenty or thirty years and who are considered to be Saint-Martinois by adoption do not hire Saint-Martinois for all that, ”we could hear.
Others wanted to know how the COM distributed its subsidies to associations, how the money allocated for reconstruction had been distributed "while houses are still without roof".
In addition, the administrative system has been widely criticized. "Since the French State and social assistance were established on the territory, the Saint-Martinois have become poorer," commented a person in the audience. The difficulty of filling in files and responding to calls for tenders was also highlighted as a brake, as not everyone was able to do so.
Finally, a youngster from the neighborhood insisted on the “will” to make things happen. If there is no will, be it that of the residents or the elected officials, nothing will move, he suggested. He also suggested to elected officials that small actions could be implemented easily by mobilizing little money. “For example, set up a bus to allow the elderly to get around. "
Annick Petrus, Valérie Damaseau, Jean-Sébastien Hamlet, Yolande Sylvestre and the new deputy director general of the Solidarité Familles cluster took note of the remarks made at Sandy Ground. They will compile them with those that were issued last night at Concordia, today in Grand Case and Friday in Quartier d'Orléans to write a report and a white paper.
6,898 total views
No comments