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Rome snarled by transport strike, school protests

Rome snarled by transport strike, school protests

'Citizens taken hostage' says watchdog

Rome, 02 October 2015, 16:26

ANSA Editorial

ANSACheck

- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

-     ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Rome was snarled by a transport strike and student protests against school reforms Friday, with traffic building up and the few buses available stormed by desperate commuters.
    The head of the national strike watchdog said that citizens of the Italian capital had become "hostages" to strike action by transport unions.
    Friday's strike by the small grassroots USB union led to much greater disruption than expected.
    Both the A and B metro lines were closed as well as the line from Rome to Rome Lido.
    USB said some 60% of drivers had walked off the job, but Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli said the number was 30%, representing 69 metro drivers. Some passengers at the busy Metro B Piramide station began pressing against the closed station gates, trying to open them, and upon finding them closed began hurling insults.
    A doctor at the Policlinico Hospital said she left work at 7 p.m. on Thursday and after not seeing any more signs announcing the planned strike, assumed that it was no longer taking place.
    "This morning I left calmly, knowing there wasn't a strike.
    Now I don't know what to do," the doctor said.
    Roberto Alesse, president of the government's Strike Guarantee Commission, said citizens are at risk of being held hostage by the system, and that the law on strikes needs to be updated.
    "The sacrificial victims of a system that doesn't work are the citizens who use it, true and real hostages of the myriad of strikes proclaimed in essential public service sectors," Alesse said.
    Between January 1, 2015 and September 15, 1,561 strikes were declared in essential public service sectors, constituting a 7.5% increase on 2014 figures, a year that itself saw an increase of 6%, to 1,055 strikes, Alesse said.
    Rome residents have been hit by an average of two local-transport strikes a month this year, the head of the national strike watchdog said.
    In 2015, said Alesse, there have been 16 strikes so far this year.
    Alesse added that "we have seen another day of serious disruption for Roman citzens, who are hostage to a system of public transport that is on the verge of collapsing". In the rest of the country transport strikes were up 40% this year, he said.
    Transport Minister Graziano Delrio said Italian citizens shouldn't have to pay the consequences of the seemingly endless spate of public-sector strikes. "More responsibility is needed on the part of all, and we have to make sure that citizens aren't penalised," he said. The minister said efforts had to be made to "return to a normal dialogue" with trade unions "for the renewal of contracts while respecting citizens". Traffic in Rome on Friday was further halted by students protesting the government's school reforms.
    A few hundred high school students held a march across part of downtown Rome to the Ministry of Education, where they staged a protest against the government's recently approved "Good School" reform.
    Protest leaders said they were demonstrating against aspects of the reform that they believe favor private schools over public schools and give public school headmasters more powers, as well as a program allowing for alternating school and work under which they said "we'll be forced to work with out pay, exploited".
    The students were accompanied by police during a nearly two-kilometre march that took them across the Tiber River.
    Protest leaders said they were self-organized and separate from a UDS student union demonstration scheduled for October 9.
    The group held a banner reading: "We're not asking for the future, we're taking the present. #nohighcostofliving #nojobsact #nogoodschool".
    "We want our schools public, secular, and united," a protest leader said.
    When the march reached the Ministry of Education, police dressed in riot gear were on hand as some of the protesters threw smoke bombs and paint balls filled with orange paint onto the steps of the ministry building.
    Four students allegedly involved were later identified, Rome police said, while they are still working on identifying others involved.
    Further north in Pisa, a few dozen students also protested against the reform, throwing eggs at the Pisa provincial government building as well as the provincial headquarters of Premier Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD).
    In Turin, about 150 students protested the school reform, marching downtown and causing some traffic disruption.
    In that demonstration, students lit smoke bombs and hung anti-Renzi posters on the windows of a bookstore.
    The Rome traffic snarls caused several accidents and combined with heavy rains and wind on Friday in the capital that resulted in a tree falling on some parked cars on the outskirts of the city.
   

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