2024-04-19 20:35:19
The Association of Employees of the OTA of the Prefecture of Ioannina requests an immediate meeting with the mayor of Ioannina, citing urgent problems in the Cleaning Department and presenting a situation even worse than the one they had exposed to Thomas Bega on February 27.
Given that there was no initiative by the mayor for a meeting and he did not respond to a previous request for a meeting on March 6, the OTA Employees Association is coming back and calling the n mayor to a meeting this afternoon, leaving it up to him to choose the exact time and place of the meeting .
“The situation in the Cleaning Department continues to be explosive. There are days of the week when only 20 street sweepers work for the entire basin. The staff is crippled, there are far more sick leaves than the rest of the services and, when normal or parental leaves are used, the city is cleaned by only 12 street cleaners, while the posts in the Municipality of Ioannita are 76”, reports the Workers’ Association OTA, pointing out that the only change was to the hours of operation of the service, with the city cleaning starting at 7 am instead of 6. This choice of yours results, according to the Association, in the start of the shift coinciding with start of traffic in the city and the opening of schools, while there are longer hours when workers clean the city with the sun beating down on their eyes.
A second issue, which is touched on, concerns the obligation to submit the cleaning workers’ diplomas to the service, so that decisions can be made for exceptionally driving electric vehicles. The OTA Employees Association is talking about a clearly illegal decision, which, if it could be implemented, would make it even worse to sweep the streets of the whole city and villages that rarely see a street sweeper, to improve the cleaning of the pedestrian streets.
There is also a reaction to the verbal order not to give permits to street cleaning workers on Easter days, which is linked to the delay in hiring staff with 8-month contracts. “The municipal authority took absolutely no action and now requires workers not to rest, and not to see their families, now that schools are closed and students are returning to their homes,” complains the OTA Employees Association.
“Explosive” also characterizes the situation in waste collection, as the contracts of nine drivers and 28 cleaning workers have expired, with the result that the collection workers cannot take days off for their 6-day or in some cases 7-day work. “The Municipality of Ioannina, despite the promises for a solution to the problem, will not hire any cleaning workers for 2024 (the six permanent staff recruitments concern three PE Engineering positions, two PE Administrative positions and one PE Psychologist position). Instead of permanent hires, the Municipal Committee decided to hire only 16 cleaning workers with two-month contracts”, he notes, while also referring to the situation at the Municipality’s construction site, arguing that it remains unacceptable due to the tons of scrap metal stored in the area, while he has not been satisfied the request to create toilets for female workers. Finally, she complains that the request for a specialized study on Personal Protective Equipment to facilitate work and protect female workers instead of making their work more difficult has fallen on deaf ears, as well as the request for staff training on health and safety issues .