“We are not asking them to pay us for plane tickets.
We are just asking for the right to be able to telework wherever we want.
These words are those of Stéphanie *, a French teacher in India who wishes to return to France with her husband, also a teacher, and their children.
The health situation is indeed deteriorating day by day in the country with more than 400,000 new cases of Covid-19 and more than 4,000 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours.
With several of her colleagues who work like her in French educational establishments in the country, they are demanding the right to be repatriated.
But the threat of a post abandonment hangs over their heads.
They risk losing their jobs there and being reintegrated in France if they leave India without being invited.
Distance learning from India
The case has already arisen, according to Stéphanie.
Last year, a French teacher in the Maghreb left her host country because of the health crisis, without being authorized to do so, and was threatened with abandonment of her post, she says, without our being able to confirm it to us.
A similar case recently occurred in a French establishment in India, assures us this professor, who wishes to remain anonymous: “A French colleague left India because of the situation and was threatened to see her qualified departure. abandonment of post.
“Not working in the same school, she does not yet know where the situation is and whether she was able to provide a medical certificate justifying her return to France, which would prevent her from losing her job.
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According to the diplomatic post, if teachers can return during school holidays, they are however not allowed to go to France outside these specific periods, which means that distance education must be done from India. and not from French soil.
Sending an inter-union letter
Including in times of pandemic? After the departure of this colleague, Stéphanie, as well as other French teachers in India requested the help of SNES-Hors de France (National Union of Secondary Education) which wrote an inter-union letter for the attention of the director. the Agency for French Education Abroad (AEFE), a detachment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The cooperation and cultural action advisor (Cocac) has also been copied. The letter therefore reached the French Embassy in New Delhi but it did not respond.
If private French companies impose repatriation on their employees in India, why the situation would be different for civil servants, ask the unions in this letter that we were able to consult. “They (private companies) here fulfill their obligation of safety with regard to their employees. Isn't the Agency subject to identical constraints? A question that has remained unanswered until now.
In view of the health situation and being in distance school since mid-April, the teachers consider "extremely unlikely that [their] Indian establishments will be able to reopen before the end of the school year".
Consequently, they "wish [to] know the logic which authorizes the AEFE to prohibit its personnel from choosing the place from which they provide their distance education".
On this point, the question also remains.
"Pure and hard administrative"
And the teachers add to the attention of the AEFE: “We therefore ask you to consider the request of some of us to freely choose the place from where they provide their distance education.
"
A few days later, the response from the human resources of the AEFE fell. “It's straightforward administration. It's cold, ”laments the French teacher. The letter, which we were able to obtain, includes a precise list of comorbidities that teachers must present to justify a request for repatriation to France. These include "being 65 years of age and over", "having chronic renal failure on dialysis" or "having congenital or acquired immunosuppression". If they are not considered as vulnerable people, the teachers cannot then claim to return to France.
A well-informed source on this subject indicates that there may indeed be exceptions on a case-by-case basis to be able to return to work from home in France due to the current health context. This concerns vulnerable personnel with fragile health. Last year, continues this source, about forty people left their country of assignment themselves and things were settled on a case-by-case basis, most of them having been able to keep their posts there. Repatriations in due form, in connection with insurance companies, have also taken place from Ethiopia, Madagascar or more recently India. Provisions have also been put in place to facilitate work from France if these agents then find themselves unable to return to their country of assignment.
But the rule remains this, we are confirmed: teachers can therefore ask to return but only if they are among the people at risk and on presentation of a medical certificate attesting to it.
"The AEFE plays on fear because it knows that some teachers have been there for a long time and that they do not want to lose their job, so no one moves", laments Stéphanie.
“At the legal and legal level, they are super limits.
They tell us to stay in the country but we have no text on it, ”she adds, all the more vehemently since her American colleagues do not have this concern:“ We encourage them to return ”.
"We encourage American citizens who wish to leave India to take advantage of the current commercial flights available", indeed write the American authorities on the website of the embassy.
"We really feel in danger"
“Beyond the Covid, we are in stress.
We really feel in danger ”, relates the French teacher.
With hospitals overwhelmed by the daily influx of patients and the risk of oxygen shortages, she knows she and her family must not get sick because they cannot be cured.
When we joined her, the teacher had just learned of the death from the Covid of a French forty-something, married to one of her colleagues.
“We don't understand why we can't do our distance education wherever we want.
We feel more than abandoned.
There is fear and misunderstanding, ”she explains.
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As for the threat of abandonment of post if she and her colleagues were to return to French soil anyway, she believes that “there is a legal vacuum.
We do not know if we will be sanctioned or not ”.
But this situation in India is far from being a special case, explains the teacher: “All French teachers
(abroad)
have been stuck since last year.
"
In the meantime, Stéphanie has only one fear, "that they will stop the flights to France".
* The first name has been changed
