According to what the Minister responsible for public accounts, Gabriel Atal, announced in an interview with the newspaper “Le Parisien”, the government intends to “tighten” the conditions for residency in France “to benefit from social assistance”, by establishing a broad plan to control the “false beneficiaries” of that aid.
The minister, who indicated that there are more than a million retirees receiving their pensions while they are outside France, half of them outside the European Union and more than half of those (300 thousand) in Algeria alone, confirmed that this measure will enter into force on September 1, within the framework of an amendment to the financing law. Social Security Act of 2023 (otherwise known as the Pension Reform Act) passed last April 14.
Thus, it will now be necessary for retired immigrants to spend 9 months of the year in the country, compared to 6 months currently, in order to be able to benefit from family allowances or the minimum age limit, and the same applies to housing assistance, which currently requires only 8 months of presence on the land. French.
The government also wants social protection agencies to be able to check airline passenger lists for potential fraud, and the Finance Ministry wants to check whether retired migrant workers are receiving their pensions according to the law, especially those who have died but whose pensions are still being sent. to their accounts contrary to the law.
Repression of the social rights of the “Sheibani”
This plan mainly concerns thousands of immigrants coming to France from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in the youth period, specifically during the glorious thirties (1946-1975), who were working in hard professions, including construction, agriculture, mines, factories, and other professions that required a hand. working.
This group of immigrants, or what is known in France as “al-Shaibani” (the elderly in the Maghreb dialect), currently ranges between 75 and 82 years of age. Solidarity allowance for the elderly.
In his interview with “Sky News Arabia”, the head of the Franco-Moroccan Association “Cape Sud MRE”, Salem Fakir, who is known for his long struggle to resolve the outstanding “Al-Shaibani” files, considers that “actual fraud is what this group has been exposed to.”
And he continues: “This social assistance that is paid to some elderly people, in addition to their low pension, only allows them to obtain what is equivalent to the minimum age limit, due to the employer’s fraud during the past years and his failure to authorize their full working hours, additional hours, or sick leave.”
However, to obtain this assistance, the foreign retired worker must prove that he resides in a stable and regular manner, that is, he must spend a period of not less than 6 months and one day per year in France, according to Fakir.
On the other hand, he considers that “the solidarity allowance for the elderly was created because the French government knew of the deception that these retirees were subjected to, so why this procrastination? And what fraud is it talking about knowing that the elderly have the right to a full and decent pension?”
It seems that the decision to extend the period surprised Fikir, who was aspiring to engage in a new struggle that would allow this period to be reduced or abandoned, especially since he had previously fought a battle that culminated on July 23, 2019 with the enactment of a new law that enables retired North African workers to receive their full pension without the need for Aid or allowances, from returning and settling in their home countries while benefiting from social security rights that allow them, for example, to receive treatment without problems.
The same sense of frustration and sadness gripped Mohamed Ould El Hajj, the elderly Tunisian man, who is over 80 years old, according to Sky News Arabia.
Ould al-Hajj continues: “We were subjected to a great deception. We did not discover the employer’s tampering with our working hours until after retirement. If we were not the heads of large families who depended on our pension, which does not exceed 500 euros, we would not have stayed here begging for our rights.”
Ould al-Hajj, who was counting on visiting his country at the beginning of next September, thinks that he must accept the idea of dying alone in a hostel far from his family, after applying this extension.
According to the French government, between 6 and 8 billion euros of social assistance funds go annually to those who are not eligible due to fraud.
“Social fraud, like tax evasion, is like a hidden tax imposed on working French people,” Gabriel Atal, the minister responsible for public accounts, stressed.
In this regard, he promised that, before the end of President Emmanuel Macron’s term in early 2027, a thousand jobs will be created in the field of combating these frauds, indicating that the government also intends to invest one billion euros to develop information systems.
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