Strikes in French Polynesia over rules imposed on townships
New rules imposed by France on communities in French Polynesia are prompting ongoing strikes by municipal workers.
Transcript
New rules imposed by France on communities in French Polynesia are prompting ongoing strikes by municipal workers.
The 'communal public service' rules seek to rule out cronyism and the appointment of family members to posts, and impose conditions like having tertiary qualifications.
The editor of Tahiti-Pacifique, Alex du Prel, says it puts a heavy financial burden on mayors and workers, and many of the rules are not applicable to the territories.
But Alex du Prel told Alex Perrottet the workers need to get specific with their demands.
ALEX DU PREL: They decided to make a strike and asking the French government, that means the High Commissioner, to change the rules. But the High Commissioner cannot change the rules or anything so they used the present communal elections as blackmail, because communal workers who set up all the booths, the voting booths and everything that goes around with it. We managed to go through the elections but it's going to go on and we basically have the main problem of French Polynesia that you have a certain class of public servants which are quite well paid, generally twice what the public sector pays and once again we have the rich, who strike.
ALEX PERROTTET: It seems that Mr Flosse is going to meet with the strikers tomorrow, is that set to go ahead?
ADP: Well he was supposed to meet them today, and then it was reported as tomorrow, you know only God knows if there's going to be a meeting but like I said, Mr Flosse cannot do much because these laws are imposed by Paris and he has no way to change them whatsoever.
AP: The laws that have come down from Paris, do they get practical, do they stipulate exactly what the tests and the exams are? Are these workers striking more over fear than the actual reality of the hoops that they're going to have to jump through? What's your view on that?
ADP: The problem is they are setting up a very heavy bureaucratic machine and the problem is it's not adapted. For example, one of these new laws says that townships have to provide drinking water to every house that's in their commune. Now you go into the Tuamotus for example, which are atolls, where the only water there is is rainwater that people collect on their roofs and store in a tank. These are laws adapted to communes in France but you just cannot apply them.
AP: Do you think that strikes like this, that we've seen this week, are going to get them to take notice?
ADP: The problem is that communal workers have not even once explained what they would like really to be changed. They just say no, this new status doesn't fit us, it's no good, again, these are technocratic tests, so the people who will get the good jobs are the people out of the urban society who have gone up in the urban society of Tahiti. And while the population, or people who have gone up in the outer island or in the atolls or anything, they would not be able to compete because they do not have the technocratic lingo that you need to get those jobs.
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