From the first day of the resumption of the garbage collectors’ strike in Paris, waste collection proved to be “strongly disturbed”, indicates the town hall of Paris to Figaro. Blockades and filtering dams orchestrated by a few striking employees and above all by many opponents of the pension reform prevent the smooth running of waste logistics. “At this time, all the sites of Syctom (the household waste agency of the Parisian metropolis, editor’s note) are blocked”, confides the municipality Thursday afternoon.
Barely a hundred garbage trucks were able to get out of municipal garages Thursday morning, much less than usual. The dumpsters also showed “a significant delay due to blockages” in their usual route, specifies the town hall of Paris. More than half of the few garbage trucks that were able to participate in the waste collection Thursday morning cannot be emptied normally in the sorting centers. “They will have to be tomorrow morning,” say Anne Hidalgo’s teams.
The blocking of these strategic sites by the unions is enough to totally or almost completely stop waste logistics in Paris. To prevent half of the Parisian districts from finding themselves again infested with garbage, the Paris police headquarters declares to monitor the situation closely. The Ministry of the Interior, for its part, does not rule out resorting again to requisitions if necessary.
A first renewable strike, which lasted three weeks in March, caused impressive piles of waste in the Parisian districts where the collection is managed by city officials. Elsewhere in the capital, waste management is the responsibility of private companies with little or no strike action. The CGT of the Paris waste and sanitation sector called at the beginning of April for a new renewable strike against the pension reform from this Thursday.