French government faces 'huge challenge' to rebuild Mayotte

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00:00Joining us now is professor in economics and specialist in French outermost regions of the University of La Réunion, Philippe Jean-Pierre.

00:07Thanks very much for joining us on the program today. Emmanuel Macron visited the island a few days after the cyclone.

00:13He had a pretty frosty reception at the time. Is it likely to be the same, do you think, for François Beyroux?

00:21I think it will be the same, because the population in Mayotte is waiting for concrete solutions, concrete answers,

00:31because all the inhabitants are facing issues that they have to face, while they are waiting for concrete answers to resolve,

00:42because they are fed up with suffering disruption in basic needs and are tired of being rationed.

00:51So they are fed up with queuing and want to go back as early as possible to the normal way of everyday life.

01:02For instance, for energy, water access, public services and maybe communications.

01:09In that particular case, even if they check that there is some progress during the last 15 days,

01:15they feel that the progress is not going as fast as they could expect.

01:21You talk about the progress. A lot of the emergency flights are taking off from where you are in La Réunion.

01:27What is France doing? To a certain extent, anything it does to is likely to be a drop in the ocean, isn't it?

01:34Yes. I think that for France, they have to face a huge challenge to have the right answer in an emergency situation

01:44and also to provide solutions and a new perspective to rebuild Mayotte and to reinforce its resilience.

01:54And that will happen in a particular context where a large amount of euros are needed for this.

02:01And also that the French government, because one of the ministers, Emmanuel Valls, for instance,

02:07told that they have to give answers to rebuild these islands and to resolve, for instance,

02:13the issues put on the table by the illegal and the large amount of informal populations and homes.

02:21So it puts that this problem is not only about infrastructures,

02:26but how also we will make possible that the coexistence between the two parts of the populations in the island,

02:34between the formal and the informal populations.

02:37Yeah, there's been a lot of criticism, hasn't there, of the authorities for allowing the situation there to be as bad as it is,

02:43that partly due to the large number of undocumented migrants.

02:47Also, of course, people very critical of the poor conditions people have been living in.

02:51And that's before this cyclone even happened.

02:55Yeah. And before the cyclone happened,

02:58the fact that this large part of the population existed before was well documented

03:05and was put on the table by political stakeholders in Mayotte

03:11and was taken into question by those French governments.

03:15But this disaster reveals the solution has not happened as high as they expected.

03:24And so they do not reveal the fragility of the islands.

03:30And so it lets the feelings in Mayotte that maybe the vulnerability are also impacted by the presence of this population,

03:43by this urban sprawl and by this disorganized society.

03:48So this is a huge challenge that the government has to face in the next few weeks

03:55if you want to give the right answer to the right population for the first, for the emergency,

04:00and now for also the next stage of development.

04:04So just briefly and finally, I mean, for Francois Beyrou,

04:08what on earth can they do to try and make the situation better?

04:13I think that he has to go beyond the only empathic way of thinking,

04:18like because it was the responsibility of President Macron 15 days ago.

04:22And now population has to have, to can see the right feelings that they are well,

04:29there are situations it was taken into account.

04:32And because there's a contrast between the first reaction of the French government,

04:39because he puts an air bridge, for instance, between France, La Réunion and Mayotte,

04:44and it deserves some basic needs, but it does not go as far as it could be expected.

04:51And so now as the populations want that the government give them reassurance

04:59about not being feeling like left behind regions,

05:04because for the last 10 years since Mayotte has been implementing the decentralisation process,

05:12the large part of the population feel that this process,

05:16this development policy has not went as fast as it could have expected by them.

05:22Thanks for being with us on the programme today.

05:24Philippe Jean-Pierre, Professor of Economics and Specialist in France,

05:27is at Outermost Regions at the University of La Réunion.

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