"It would be, as is done in Germany, a bank holiday on which employees would work in the name of national public solidarity," state secretary for the elderly Hubert Falco said after a cabinet meeting.

Late Tuesday, Falco participated in a meeting with health care professionals chaired by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to discuss the plight of the elderly in the wake of the heat wave that left thousands dead.

The proposal to suppress a bank holiday was one of many measures put forth as the embattled center-right government tries to flesh out a multi-year action plan to protect older people, many of whom live alone.

May 8 -- Victory in Europe Day -- has been cited as a holiday that could be forsaken, prompting outrage from veterans' groups and a warning from junior veterans affairs minister Hamlaoui Mekachera.

"One has to be very careful before making a decision... these are dates of remembrance to which some people are very attached," Mekachera told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

Falco declined to name specific holidays that could be eliminated.

Raffarin, speaking during a visit to Brussels, said: "We have decided to explore it, as we are exploring a number of other questions."

He added that the idea had been suggested "during discussions with associations involved with the most vulnerable people in society."

In explaining plans for the multi-year action plan, due to be unveiled in October, the prime minister said: "We will also have a five-year plan with a certain number of structural measures which will clearly need specific financing, for which we need to find initiatives of the type that has been proposed, but which will be studied by experts before being accepted."

Raffarin's government is on the back foot, reeling from charges that it failed to respond quickly to the health emergency stemming from the punishing heat that scorched France for the first two weeks of August.

The country's largest undertakers' group has put the death toll at about 10,000, but the government has disputed that figure, with Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei estimating mid-month that some 3,000 had died.

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said Wednesday that a "definitive" tally would be released "in the next few days".

The crisis led to the resignation of France's surgeon general Lucien Abenhaim, and Mattei's job is still seen to be at risk.

But Abenhaim on Wednesday angrily denied that his services were to blame for the large number of deaths, telling BBC radio that he had alerted authorities to the scope of the crisis.

"I resigned to be able to express myself freely and explain what has happened calmly and scientifically," Abenhaim said. "We have no responsibility whatsoever in our department for what happened here."

The deaths have scandalized France, which prides itself on the quality of its health service. More than a week after the end of the heat wave, hundreds of bodies remained in makeshift morgues, mainly in the Paris area.

But Cope quoted Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy as saying authorities were slowly clearing the backlog of corpses and that the situation was gradually returning to normal.

TERRA.WIRE