French President Emmanuel Macron has faced jeers from locals on the cyclone-battered French overseas territory of Mayotte, telling them they should be “happy to be in France, because if it wasn’t France you’d be 10,

In a clip published Thursday by online news outlet Brut, Macron angrily told an inhabitant of Mayotte, an island in the Indian Ocean, that the territory would be “10,000 times” worse off without the French state — comments that were swiftly slammed as neocolonialist.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been heckled during his visit to cyclone-hit Mayotte. After facing boos and calls to resign from locals demanding more aid in devastated areas, Macron responded by telling locals: "I'm not the cyclone.