More and more rubbish
While the stench of rotting garbage grew stronger over Athens yesterday, the government and the city council bickered over who ought to tackle the demands of the capital’s rubbish collectors, who have been on strike since Monday. Although the action was immediately ruled illegal in court, the strikers have vowed to persist until their demands – mainly full-time status for some 250 workers on short-term contracts – are met. The Athens city council has ruled out any disciplinary action, advising Athenians to keep their rubbish at home. Yesterday, Athens Mayor Dimitris Avramopoulos, who has publicly espoused the strikers’ demands, told a press conference that the problem was political. «Governments are there to face crises and solve problems,» he said, and accused Deputy Interior Minister Lambros Papadimas – who has handled the matter on behalf of the ruling Socialists – of being «too weak to solve the problem.» Avramopoulos, who was elected on the conservative New Democracy ticket and now heads the small Movement of Free Citizens party, claims the Interior Ministry alone has jurisdiction over public sector and local authority hirings. Interior Minister Costas Skandalidis dumped the blame on the city council. «It is the city council’s job to keep the city clean, and the Athens Municipality must solve the problem,» he said, adding that last year’s constitutional reform precluded governments from conferring full-time status on contract workers. The minister added that the strikers’ demand for a 2-percent pay increase was the municipality’s business. The city council, Skandalidis said, should either use its 2,000 full-time workers – who, although not officially on strike, are not working either – to collect the rubbish, or consider handing the job to private contractors. And he accused the city council of incessant shilly-shallying. «The first day, the municipality’s secretary-general said there would be sackings if the strike continued. On the second day, the deputy mayor called in the prosecutor. On the third day, the mayor himself called on the government to give the contract workers full-time status, although he knew that that is not constitutionally possible. And on the fourth day, the city council decided to support the illegal strikers.» Meanwhile, an Athens prosecutor called for an investigation into the strike yesterday, citing newspaper reports of mounting rubbish heaps.
