Community groups in Montreal are worried the people they serve are going to have to struggle harder for help.
The provincial government is closing an employment office in Cote des Neiges at the end of August.
About 3,500 people go the employment office, or CLE, at 6655 Cote des Neiges Rd. every month -- 40 percent of them immigrants.
However the Quebec government has decided to not renew its lease on the space and it will close at noon on August 25.
The welfare agents and the case files for citizens will be transferred to an office at Decarie Square, two kilometres away.
Nathalie Rech of Project Genesis said this seemingly short distance is a challenge to people who are broke.
"It's challenging because people don't have money to pay for the bus basically and they have to deal with agents quite frequently when they apply for welfare," said Rech.
She said several other offices have closed over the past decade as the government pushes to deal with people remotely.
"They are referred more and more to a phone line," said Rech.
Jean-Francois Sylvestre of the civil servants' union said the technological approach isn't working.
"People go to the website, don't understand what they're reading, so they return to the CLE," he said.
Sylvestre said the rules and forms are complicated, and that many people need help filling them out.
"The service used to be more human," he said.
Rech said wading through the bureaucracy is difficult.
"We see a lot of people who are so discouraged by those rules that they don't want to even apply," said Rech.
A spokesperson for Employment and Welfare Minister Francois Blais said the ministry evaluated several scenarios to determine if the CLE should stay in the neighbourhood, but decided to transfer the files.
Community groups and CLE employees are hoping the ministry has a change of heart.
