Will there still be paper at Christmas at the prefecture? While the State is tightening the purse strings everywhere, the various services in Indre-et-Loire are being asked to make savings, even in office supplies.
Distributed in the heart of summer, a note dated August 6, 2024 details to territorial administration agents “savings measures to be implemented immediately” because of “new budgetary restrictions”. Of the “saving bits of string” on a situation already “tense” denounced this October by an inter-union delegation (FO-CGT-CFDT-FSU-Solidaires).
A little more than two months after the implementation of these savings measures, “there is still some paper left”smiles, yellow, a representative (1) of the Departmental Territorial Directorate (DDT). A certain “flexibility” allows them, here to exchange reams from one department to another, there to use little-used reams of colored paper internally. For the rest, the restrictions are already being felt.
“Days at 12°C”
At the Departmental Directorate of Employment, Labor and Solidarity (DDETS), at the prefecture, as well as at the DDT (Departmental Directorate of Territories), training courses which could not take place remotely were purely and simply cancelled, “including job-starting training”notes the inter-union.
In the field, agents suffer directly from the limitation of fees. On this question, the prefect’s note is clear: “The principle is to stop travel. » “We regularly have meetings on the ground with elected officials and communities. From now on, we must offer them video conferences, points out a DDT representative. And if we absolutely have to take our service vehicle, we have to go through a table, which must be validated by the prefecture… It’s a real gas factory. » All this without counting the heating, cut off early in the spring and still not turned back on. “We had days at 12°C in the premises in April”points out a DDT representative. At the prefecture too, plaids have been out since the beginning of autumn. In total, over the year 2024, the expected savings reach, for example for the DDETS, up to -14% of the operating budget.
A “lack of human resources”
“All this happens in an already very tense context”blurted out a representative of the prefecture. Because if these representatives of civil servants rather accustomed to respecting the duty of confidentiality speak, it is to explain “to the public, to users, the way we work”explains the inter-union.
These savings are added to a daily life already weighed down by “a succession of reforms”and “lack of human resources”. At the DDETS, these are positions which are not filled, at the prefecture, apprentices who compensate for the lack of personnel. “We work in degraded mode”, sums up an elected agent. With direct effects on the service provided. “For example, on naturalizations, we are very late”illustrates a union representative.
When requested, the prefect’s communications service did not respond. But faced with a union delegation, and even in his note, Patrice Latron said to himself “conscious of effort” asked, and thanks “in advance [les agents] pour [leur] engagement ». A little handwritten note which initials the note sent by “dematerialized mail by email”following the “principles” economy now in force.
(1) The union representatives did not wish to be cited by name.
