The PS mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, support of the social movement against the pension reform, condemned Friday “violence which diverts attention”, which occurred in particular in the context of the demonstrations, Thursday in the district of the Opéra Garnier. “The demonstration, which went well, turned extremely violent and worrying,” said the elected socialist on Friday after the meeting of her crisis unit on the social movement and its consequences.
Anne Hidalgo launches a “call for calm”
“I condemn this violence, because it diverts attention from a subject on which there is an immense majority of French people who find themselves, namely asking for the withdrawal of the law on pensions”, declared Anne Hidalgo in launching a “call for calm”. She castigated the “stubbornness of the President of the Republic to want to force through” the reform. “His speech” on Wednesday “only made the situation worse,” she said.
Numerous violence and clashes with the police punctuated the demonstration against the pension reform Thursday in Paris, before turning into “wild” processions for much of the evening, around the district of the Opera where the procession ended. Nine bus shelters, six kiosks, two sanisettes, tree grates and 22 traffic lights in this district were damaged, according to a count provided by Anne Hidalgo.
According to the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, 140 fires have been recorded in the capital, lit for the most part from garbage cans which could not be collected, due to the strike of garbage collectors and employees of incineration sites. .
A minimum waste collection service provided
Thursday, 9,600 tons of garbage strewn the Parisian sidewalks, a globally stable volume for a week despite the requisitions ordered by the police headquarters. If “158 dumpsters went out on Friday, 10% more than a normal Friday”, underlined Anne Hidalgo, “travel times remain long” due to incinerator blockages, “and therefore we have a capacity which is always reduced by half”. The former socialist presidential candidate is accused by her opponents, but also by some traders, of not doing everything to limit the impact of this strike that she supports.
“Every day, in Paris, we generate 3,000 tonnes of waste. We collect (since the start of the strike) every day at least 50% to 66%, it is much more than a minimum service. But we do this that we can with what we have”, replied the first deputy (PS) Emmanuel Grégoire on Friday. Asked about the rate of strikers among municipal agents, Emmanuel Grégoire said that it had gone from 6% to 25% since the start of the requisitions, underlining the “unproductive nature of this type of measure”.