“The employees of the town hall asked me for a day for resurrection”, jokes Xavier Predevello today. But when he found out he was officially dead, the Mayor of Saint-Porquiera village in Tarn-et-Garonne located between Montauban and Castelsarrasin, the city councilor laughed rather yellow.
“On November 16, a 60-year-old resident died in the town. The next day, as is customary, we sent a certificate to Insee and the Regional Health Agency. The following Tuesday, the town clerk called me to say “Xavier, what time did you die?” “, remembers the chosen one.
Also removed from the CPAM
If the story seems hilarious at first, Xavier Predevello realizes that the administrative machine must be quickly stopped. “We called the prefecture not to be removed from the electoral lists, we sent an email to INSEE. Within seventy-two hours we managed to settle the error with INSEE. But, in the meantime, I received a letter telling me that I had been struck off by the Primary Health Insurance Fund. And death notices have appeared on specialized sites, ”reports the main interested party.
And the news travels fast. That’s how one day he received a phone call from an acquaintance in Castelsarrasin, where he was born. “This person was devastated, practically in tears. I said to myself that I had to make a denial. One site removed the review, the other did not. It would be up to INSEE, which distributes these data, even though they are confidential, to have them corrected”, insists Xavier Predevello.
“Rare” errors on the 650,000 annual deaths
“This is not confidential information, it is put online on the Insee site and that is where these sites come to get the information,” notes Caroline Jamet, director of Insee Occitanie.
For this person in charge, the wrongs would be shared. “These are the first and last names that appeared on the report card we received. However, the sex checked was female and the date of birth did not correspond. INSEE could have detected the error, realized it”, recognizes the regional manager of the Institute of Statistics.
According to her, this type of mishap is “quite rare” out of the 650,000 deaths recorded each year in France and would only concern “a few hundred cases”. “Often these are homonyms, people with the same name, the same date of birth. The initial error comes from the municipality and we did not detect it immediately, ”continues Caroline Jamet.
For his part, Xavier Predevello maintains that his name did not appear on the form. Before adding: “We realized it quickly, but when you are an ordinary citizen, you may not realize it until you go to vote and you are told that you have been removed from the electoral lists. . We must prevent this from happening again”.