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Victoria Mindova

The government has decided to mobilize 8095 civil servants from local government organizations. So far, more than 300 employees in the capital city have received summonses and their handling might take more time than expected. Among them are the employees of the cleaning department in the region of Attica, who have been on strike for more than a month and the forced summons to go back to work is the latest measure the government has used to make them return to their obligations. From mid-September, not only civil unrest and protests have been shaking Athens but also tons of waste has covered it and its removal would take at least three weeks.

According to recent information, the mobilized employees from the cleaning department would have to carry out 120,000 tons of waste as soon as possible. All sorts of waste are equally overwhelming the central parts of the city and the suburbs and the dust-bins in the neighbourhoods are already hidden under mountains of bags, decaying under the autumn rains followed by sunshine and winds. The smell in the neighbourhoods is unbearable, citizens complain, and the risk of infection and propagation of undesirable insects is increasing. During the strike, the hygiene and epidemiological inspectorate sprayed disinfectants over the waste several times but the procedure was not regular and was not carried out in all areas.

Trade unions

"We have announced a 24-hour strike to oppose the civil mobilization they imposed," said for GRReporter  the Chief Secretary of the union of employees in local governments, Marcos Davramalis. He explained that the protest would be terminated if the government withdrew its plans to hire private companies to do the job of the public cleaning department. In addition, trade unions are demanding a revision in the reduction of salaries of municipal employees since many of them would not receive more than € 1,000 net monthly salary after the changes. "Overall, our demands do not differ from those of the entire Greek society. We are against the reduction of wages, against dismissal and against high taxes on ordinary working people when the real culprits of the crisis go unpunished," said Davramalis.

Citizens

"My daughter’s school bus stops at the beginning of the street where we live. Right by the dust-bins. For two weeks now it has become impossible to step on the sidewalk due to the decaying waste and we have to cross the street running every morning to get to the other side, where the new school bus stop is," said with dissatisfaction Atonis, the father of a six-year old girl. He said that since her birth, he and his wife have opened a savings fund in order to be able to send the child to a private school when she grows up.

"I want the least possible contact with the public sector, whether it is administration, education or health. The reason is precisely that they do not do their job, threaten the public interest because of their own needs and on top of that, receive their wages while on strike. In the private sector, who would say that he would not go to work because he is protesting and would get paid for it? "asks the angry young father rhetorically.

A young family from the northern suburbs said that after the strike, they decided to collect the household waste on the balcony. "This is the responsible way to act in such a moment of crisis," said the couple. They divide their household waste into recyclable and ordinary waste. "After two weeks of collecting all the waste on my back balcony, it became clear that this could not continue. We had to take out the bags we had collected in sacks to the pile of waste in front of the block of flats. I hope that with the mobilization of municipal workers, our street will be one of the first to be clean," said the wife.

On the second day of the protests outside the Parliament, GRReporter met with some civil servants who support all strikes in the country. "I have been working in the public sector for 20 years now. There may be problems, but the measures they want to pass will not do even if they are voted for," said a middle-aged woman who is a member of the trade union of public administration employees. Concerning the protest of local government organizations employees, she said, "They have done the right thing in striking. These politicians stink and if they cannot understand it one way, it will happen in another."