SCHOOLCHILDREN and students across Greece protested on Monday against cutbacks to the education sector, and the ‘intensification of performance evaluation’ which is part of the reforms implemented by the SYRIZA-led government.
Protesters gathered outside the Education Ministry in the northern Athens suburb of Maroussi at midday and schoolchildren demonstrated against the planned reforms in central Athens. Greece’s biggest trade unions have called a new general strike this month against bailout-linked austerity policies, in the wake of new conditions imposed by Greece’s international bailout creditors.
The ADEDY civil servants’ union has called the strike for December 14, in which private sector unions will also participate, to protest against pension and salary cuts and to demand pay rises and public sector hiring.
Successive Greek governments have slashed spending and salaries, while hiking taxes and curtailing civil service hiring, to secure the bailouts that have kept the country afloat since 2010. The bailout programme is set to end in August 2018, after which Greece must finance itself by selling government bonds.
Among the attacks on Greek workers agreed with the bankers, the new Highway Code, being designed by the Transport Ministry, will abolish a 50 per cent discount currently enjoyed by motorists for paying their fines within 10 days after receiving them.
This is the latest addition to the draft bill, which also foresees a system for calculating many fines according to the financial abilities of each violator, as well as reducing fixed penalties by as much as 40 per cent.
Transport Minister Christos Spirtzis told the technical team of the country’s creditors that the ministry would also be creating a comprehensive database of all vehicles and their owners, which will also contain data provided by the Citizens’ Protection Ministry.
Four new toll stations are due to open on the Egnatia Odos highway in northern Greece on December 14, increasing the cost of motorists’ journeys. The new tolls will be at Pamviotida, Mesti, Ieropigi and Evzones, with charges being calculated according to distance.
A regular car, for example, will have to pay 1.20 euros at Pamviotida and 2.10 euros at Ieropigi.
The Transport Ministry said motorists with an unemployment card will be allowed through without charge, while there are also plans to introduce measures so that residents in the Egnatia Odos area do not have to pay tolls when travelling short distances.
Workers at two Public Power Corporation units, that being are being put up for sale as part of the government’s plans to privatise 40 per cent of the state-owned company’s lignite powered plants, are holding rallies and warn of more action to oppose the move.
On Monday, workers at the company’s Florina plant in northern Greece, as well as hundreds of residents whose livelihoods depend on the business, gathered outside the factory, while a similar rally is being held today at the PPC plant in Megalopoli in the Peloponnese.
Speaking on Skai TV on Friday, the head of the PPC union, GENOP, Giorgos Adamidis, said the government needs to brace for a ‘tough situation’. ‘I don’t know whether there will be blackouts … but there will certainly be strikes’ he said.
Meanwhile, commuters in the Greek capital faced traffic disruptions last Tuesday as islanders and other protesters held a rally outside the Migration Policy Ministry in downtown Athens to demand immediate relief for the eastern Aegean islands of Samos, Lesbos and Chios, where facilities for refugees are overflowing with thousands of stranded asylum seekers.
The demonstration, which was organised by the municipalities of the three islands, highlighted the urgency of the situation, as thousands of asylum seekers have been trapped there for more than a year, testing the endurance of local communities.
Rights groups have warned of a new humanitarian crisis on the islands as hundreds of migrants are sleeping in tents amid worsening weather conditions. Authorities on Lesbos detained 25 individuals for occupying a central square on the eastern Aegean island’s capital, Mytilene, late on Sunday.
The protesters, all of them north African refugees, were demanding that authorities process their asylum applications and their transfer to mainland Greece. Nine were later released because they were minors, while 16 were expected to appear before a local court on Monday.
Meanwhile, a group of Afghan asylum-seekers continued to occupy the offices of ruling SYRIZA party in Mytilene for a tenth day on Monday demanding that authorities transfer them to Athens. More than 8,500 refugees are staying on Lesbos pending processing of their cases, with 6,600 staying in camps designed to accommodate 2,300. Last month, residents on Lesbos went on strike to protest against European policies they say have turned it into a ‘prison’ for refugees.
• 588 people are now safely onboard Aquarius, a search and rescue vessel run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and SOS Méditerranée, said MSF on Sunday. But an unknown number of people are missing, presumed drowned, after a gruelling day of rescues in the Mediterranean on 1st November, the charity added.
‘The situation suddenly turned into a nightmare when one of three rubber boats overloaded with men, women and young children collapsed and dozens of people fell into sea,’ said Dr Seif Khirfan, MSF’s medical doctor on board Aquarius.
‘Our teams launched all available flotation devices, distributed life jackets and pulled people from the water. We were able to revive a man in cardiac arrest who was then medically evacuated by helicopter to Italy. Although no bodies were recovered, we witnessed people submerged under the water.’
With dozens of people in the water in worsening winter conditions on the Mediterranean, there were multiple cases of mild to moderate hypothermia. The medical team also treated older injuries people had suffered while inside Libya, a country where refugees and migrants are exposed to alarming levels of violence and exploitation.
‘One man had an open fracture and dislocation of his left ankle which was one month old. He told me he sustained the injury trying to escape gunfire in Libya,’ said Dr Khirfan. ‘Another man had his arm broken a week earlier while arbitrarily detained in Libya.’
The vast majority of people rescued in the Mediterranean by MSF have transited Libya. They tell the teams about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of smugglers, armed groups and militias.
The abuses reported include being subjected to violence (including sexual violence), arbitrary detention in inhumane conditions, torture and other forms of ill-treatment, financial exploitation and forced labour.
‘People do not undertake this journey lightly, people do not risk their own lives and the lives of their children if there were easier options available to them,’ said Luca Salerno, who leads MSF’s teams onboard Aquarius.
‘The European Union and individual member states need to take urgent action to provide safe and legal channels for people to seek asylum, create legal migration pathways and make wider use of legal entry schemes so that desperate people are not forced to risk their lives on the Mediterranean.’
