“We are worried because we do not feel a real desire to change things,” reacts ATD Quart Monde.

“We’re not going to leave more than nine million people by the wayside. It’s not possible,” castigated Marie Aleth-Grard, the president of the association fighting against precariousness, on franceinfo on Thursday.

“We are worried because we do not feel a real desire to change things”deplores Thursday July 11 on franceinfo Marie Aleth-Grard, president of ATD Quart Monde, an association fighting against precariousness.

The poverty rate rose to 14.4% of the population in 2022 in metropolitan France, a level almost stable compared to 2021, according to the annual INSEE indicator published Thursday. In 2022, 9.1 million people were in a situation of monetary poverty, that is to say that they had monthly incomes below the poverty threshold, set at 60% of the median income, or 1,216 euros for a single person, according to the National Institute of Statistics.

Marie Aleth-Grard believes that “We have been without any measures taken for a while”She recalls that the association did not have “only one meeting with the Minister of Solidarity for over a year”. “Not even the Prime Minister”she regrets. “So yes we are worried.”

What worries the president most is that the association she represents does not feel “a real desire to change things, to change the lives of more than nine million people in our country.” “We’re not going to leave more than nine million people by the wayside. It’s not possible,” she gets annoyed.

“Although there are plans,” she continues, “strategies to combat poverty, it has not decreased for seven years. It is not moving, it is not diminishing.”

Marie Aleth-Grard, President of ATD Fourth World

on franceinfo

To remedy this situation, Marie Aleth-Grard is waiting “structural measures that really change people’s lives”. In detail, she wishes “an increase in social benefits that allow people to live with dignity and not be in a state of survival all the time, decent and sustainable employment and housing.”