The eradication of poverty is “impossible without a roof”

from L Express

The International Day against Poverty will be celebrated next Wednesday. While the “Comité du 17 octobre” focuses on the right for a house, “l’express” visited some of those who have increasing difficulty to make ends meet.

“When it is raining, I’d better come and sleep under this big tree,” says Noëlline resignedly as she sits on one of the big roots of this same tree at noon and eats her “bouillon poisson” in Roche-Bois. She is 55 and she has only one 12 year-old child at home. All others have got married and live in their own home. However, she still finds it more difficult to face daily expenses now than when she had her four other children at home. “Life is becoming increasingly difficult,” she regrets.

A few years back, however, Noëlline was still working to help her husband, Clément, make ends meet. But she fell ill with diabetes and heart problems and had to stop working after “remaining in hospital for some time”. So, Clément now has to cater for the three of them with his meagre monthly Rs 5,000 or so.

“We need to manage with this money to pay the rent, the shopping, the credit we took for the television… We can’t pay everything at the same time so we pay the most urgent until we manage to pay everything.” The rent amounts to Rs 450 per month but “the house is full of holes and does not protect us from the rain. The floor creaks… It is as if we were on a boat.”

Noëlline and her family wanted to try and save for a house with the National Housing Development Company (NHDC). “I started paying but then I realised I would never be able to save enough money to have a house so I preferred to stop.”

The Comité 17 octobre, chaired by the former president of the Republic, Cassam Uteem, wants housing to be at the centre of the International Day against Poverty this year – to be celebrated on Wednesday. “Two years ago, the theme chosen for this special day was ‘A roof for each family’ after families were dislodged from houses in Camp Levieux and Chebel and had to take refuge under big tents. They were given the promise that they would be given plots of lands and materials to solve the problem but nothing has been done so far,” deplores the president of the NGO.

No defender of illegality

He makes it clear that he does not want members of the NGO to become “defenders of illegality but the right to housing is a fundamental right. So we make an appeal to the government, the NGOs, civil society, the private sector and all those who feel concerned about that right to find a solution together”.

For Cassam Uteem, “eradication of poverty is simply impossible without a roof. Usually, much focus is put on education as the best way of getting out of poverty. But how can we expect a child to have good results and follow the pace if he does not even have a chair to sit at home”.

Noëlline’s little boy will be sitting for the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) for the second time this year. “I think he is working but it is only when he will be in the exam room that we will see if he is able to do something.” One of her neighbours, aged 28, has three children – the oldest is 11 and the youngest is eight. All go to school but their mother acknowledges, “it is not easy to find money to buy them uniform and food everyday before they go to school”. This is why she has started selling some vegetables near her house. “But even then life remains very hard. My husband is a mason but we have difficulty making two ends meet every month.” It is not Anne, whose only lunch seems to be this piece of plain bread, who will contradict her.

Sylvie and her husband have been pensioners for some years. Although their children are married, they still find it difficult to make ends meet because everything is becoming so expensive. Her children have been to school up to primary level only and their bad health does not allow them to work. “They come and stay with us at times and, as parents, we have to see what we can do to help them.”

While Sylvie is talking, two little boys are running around her. She comments: “These are my grandchildren. There are days we can’t afford to send them to school because we just don’t have anything to give them to eat.”

But Alain Fanchon made it clear: “We often tend to look for scapegoats – either the victims themselves or the authorities. We should stop that and create a dynamic so that victims can stand up on their feet and stop depending on others.”