Greek civil servants walked off the job on a 24-hour strike Wednesday, paralyzing the public sector in a protest over ever-deeper austerity measures

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Greek police have used tear gas against the protesters.

Clashes happened during the rallying of Greek unions in central Athens on Wednesday in a new protest over the austerity measures applied as the government struggles to avoid default.

Greek police have used tear gas against the protesters, RT's Sara Firth reports from Athens.

A group of young people began throwing stones at the law enforcers and the police responded with tear gas.

Some people required medical attention, Sara says. Ambulances have moved in to the Parliament building.

People are lying on the ground receiving medical treatment.

Public services in Greece have been disrupted as civil servants and public utility workers have declared a 24-hour strike against pay cuts.

All flights to and from Greece are grounded as strike is in full swing in Athens on Wednesday.
https://rt.com/news/greece-civil-services-strike-083/

ATHENS, Greece — Greek civil servants walked off the job on a 24-hour strike Wednesday, paralyzing the public sector in a protest over ever-deeper austerity measures applied as the government struggles to avoid a catastrophic default.

At least 16,000 protesters converged in central Athens, and a crowd of about 10,000 gathered in the northern city of Thessaloniki. They chanted slogans, banged drums and blew whistles.

Air traffic controllers joined the strike, grounding all flights to and from Greek airports. State hospitals were running on emergency staff, while lawyers, school teachers and tax officers also didn’t work. Public transport employees were holding work stoppages in the morning and evening, and state television and radio pulled news programs off the air.

Demonstrators who gathered in central Athens expressed outrage over their misfortune and bewilderment at a crisis that shows no signs of easing.

Irini Sypsomou-Arapogianni, a 57-year-old Finance Ministry employee, said the government should have acted more boldly to stem tax evasion and seemed to have lost its way despite pledges to stabilize the economy.

“Nobody knows what’s going on. Every day they say something different. It’s all so unclear,” she said. “I don’t know where all this will lead.”

Civil servants are protesting plans to suspend about 30,000 staff on partial pay, part of new cutbacks that come on top of salary and pension cuts, as well as repeated waves of tax hikes over the past year and a half.

Greece relies on a (euro) 110 billion ($145 billion) package of international bailout loans to prevent default and to pay salaries and pensions. But it has slipped on meeting budget targets required to qualify for the funds.

Its international creditors said this week that a decision on whether to give the country the critical next batch of loans, worth (euro) 8 billion ($10.5 billion), would be made some time this month — far later than the originally expected September.

Protesters in Athens directed anger at their foreign creditors, saying they had little hope that the hardship inflicted by austerity measures would yield benefits in the long run.

“If these protests don’t have an effect, then we deserve our fate,” said Zacharis Zacharia, a 59-year-old demonstrator. “Everybody’s paying except those few who drove us to this point.”

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