"It's disgusting": the Minister of the Public Service Stanislas Guerini was indignant on Tuesday evening at the power cuts which affected districts of Annonay, the electoral stronghold of the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, on the sidelines of the mobilization against pension reform.
"We must distinguish the right to demonstrate (...) and power cuts, I want to say it again with the greatest firmness," he hammered on RTL radio.
"I saw that in Annonay, there were cuts of entire neighborhoods", was alarmed Stanislas Guerini, who attributed these cuts to "union organizations".
"It's disgusting for the people who live in these neighborhoods. The people who are affected are not the Minister of Labour, it's the people who live in Annonay", an Ardèche town of which Olivier Dussopt was mayor (2008 -2017) then deputy (2007-2022), before carrying out the government's pension reform project today.
“Firefighters intervened to get people out of the elevators. There are people who live on respirators,” insisted Stanislas Guerini to illustrate the consequences of power cuts.
More than 2,000 homes were deprived of electricity early Tuesday afternoon in Annonay on the sidelines of the mobilization against the pension reform, reported Enedis, which does not exclude the track of "wild" cuts from of strikers.
These interruptions are added to the cuts caused by strikers almost everywhere in France, targeting, depending on the case, prefectures, courts, commercial and industrial areas, sometimes residential areas, the office of a deputy or producers of renewable energies, says Enedis.
"Enedis strongly condemns any illegal act on the public electricity distribution network" and "systematically files a complaint in the event of an illegal act targeting the infrastructure and equipment it operates", reacted the operator on Tuesday evening.
Opposed to the government's plan to raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, public and private unions called for a strike across the country on Tuesday.
In Annonay, a town of 16,000 inhabitants, the mobilization brought together between 5,500 (prefecture) and 12,000 demonstrators (CGT).
03/07/2023 22:23:13 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
