10,000 tonnes of trash left uncollected on strike-hit Paris streets
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People pass garbage cans overflowing with trash in Paris, on March 17, 2023.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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PARIS – The amount of trash uncollected on Paris streets due to a waste workers’ strike
The new estimate – up from 7,600 tonnes earlier in the week – comes after Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that strikers were being forced back under emergency powers designed to safeguard essential services.
“From today, from this morning, requisitioning is working and bins are being emptied,” he told RTL radio on Friday.
An aide to Paris’ Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo, an opponent of Mr Darmanin and President Emmanuel Macron, denied the change, saying that “no lorries have been out on the public side”.
The city’s municipal waste collectors began a strike and blockade of the city’s incinerators 12 days ago over Mr Macron’s pension reforms,
They guarantee waste collections in around half of the capital’s 20 districts, with the others handled by private companies.
Private companies are still working, with some of them taking contracts to clean up the increasingly smelly and crowded streets in the worst-affected areas.
Ms Delphine Burkli, Mayor of the hard-hit 9th district, on Friday suggested “calling in the army to clear the streets”. AFP
