Until the recruitment of new personnel is finalized we will have to resort to contracting out the refuse collection

The Ministry of the Interior’s haste this Easter to try and cut the Gordian knot of labour relations in the local authority cleansing services turned out not to be such a good idea – at least in its timing. The decimated Corfu cleansing service, with only half the necessary personnel had to work double shifts in order to restore the town’s image as well as some suburbs. Forget about the rest of the island. Locals and visitors ‘enjoyed’ Easter in view of the now familiar sight – although at least the Epitaphios procession didn’t pass by piles of rubbish as was the case in Piraeus, for example,  where the photos went viral.

The Mayor told Enimerosi the following: I would say that by and large we managed to deal with the major part of the problem, though we had to leave some areas as we had neither the time nor the personnel. We have to plan anew, however, as the situation cannot be sorted as things stand. From the temporary personnel list, 80 have responded, out of whom only about 40 have actually turned up. We are forced once again to contract the work out until we get the finalized personnel lists and the service has the staff to cover our planned needs.

In response to complaints from residents and visitors during Easter Week, the Deputy Mayor for Cleansing Services, Spyros Aspiotis, described the situation: The problem came about due to the personnel changes in the Cleansing Services. The Public Recruitment Office (ASEP) ‘sent’ 125 people to Corfu on April 2. Out of these, only 50 presented themselves during Easter Week. Meanwhile the contracts for the previous personnel had already terminated on 31^st March.

New recruits (even if they are existing personnel with new contracts) by law have 10 days in which to present themselves at the service and nobody can oblige them to come any sooner. Consequently, at this peak period the Cleansing Service is working at about half-strength. To deal with the workload, the Municipality arranged double shifts with 15 municipal refuse collection vehicles plus another 4 that were contracted.