Digitisation has negatively impacted the country's poorer households and illiterate citizens, Le Soir reports. A spokesperson for Walloon non-profit Lire et Ecrire revealed that "some people now risk losing their rights and benefits just because they cannot send emails."
According to recent figures from the Federal Government's Combat Poverty Service, the digital divide between society's wealthier and poorer members has grown significantly in recent years.
Looking at the SNCB's free rail pass scheme launched in 2020, the service's findings revealed that the scheme's online form had deterred Belgians with a lower income or level of education from signing up.
Belgium's anti-discrimination organisation Unia agreed with the Combat Poverty Service's findings. Director Patrick Charlier stated that digitisation had gone the wrong way around by "building websites or online forms, and only afterwards thinking about how to make it accessible to the most vulnerable people."
Digitisation also seems to have hindered illiterate Belgians' willingness to learn how to read and write, according to the Walloon non-profit. Christian, a regular participant in Lire et Ecrire's social programmes, revealed that the lack of human contact due to digitisation had led him to "not go if I know it will be at a station or car park with only terminals and machines."
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Cécilia Locmant, a spokesperson for the organisation, stated they had alerted web developers of the difficulties posed by the digitisation of public services, but that "they almost systematically had given up on making changes due to budgetary reasons."
The situation has led both Unia and the Combat Poverty Service to call for internet access to be seen as an essential good and enshrined in the Belgian constitution, with Unia's director arguing that "a system that suits the most vulnerable groups in our society will always suit all of us."
