On the 19th day of the strike, the volume of uncollected waste in the capital returned to its record level, already reached a week earlier, with the symbolic bar of 10,000 tons of garbage littering the Parisian sidewalks, according to the town hall.

And this, despite the requisitions ordered for a week by the prefecture of police, against the advice of the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, who supports the movement.

Asked about the rate of strikers among municipal agents, first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire said Friday morning, during a press briefing, that it had increased from 6% to 25% since the beginning of the requisitions, stressing the "unproductive nature of this type of measures".

However, Friday, "158 skips came out, 10% more than a normal Friday," said Anne Hidalgo at the same press briefing.

And at the same time, Syctom, the metropolitan union that manages the three incineration plants surrounding the capital, announced to AFP the end of the movement in two of them, Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) and Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine).

"The factories are unblocked" even if that of Issy was the subject in the morning of a "small filtering, object of personnel outside the factory", according to Syctom.

For Syctom, it is the "definitive end" of the movement on these two sites, where the incineration furnaces "should reopen tomorrow" Saturday, employees waiting "to have enough waste in the pit".

These ends of movement "will allow us to return to a completely normal functioning", hopes Syctom.

The strikes and blockades of these exit points for the waste of the capital have contributed, with the strike of the garbage collectors of the City of Paris, to the pile of waste in the capital for nearly three weeks, to the great displeasure of residents and traders.

"Initiative" of the prefecture

As for the third site, the most important, in Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), "the requisition of the employees of the operator" was "in progress" in the middle of the afternoon, said Syctom to AFP, while a general assembly scheduled for 14:00 was to decide on the continuation of the movement.

This requisition is "at the sole initiative of the prefecture of police," says Syctom, which has refused since the beginning of the movement to call on the police to unblock its sites, preferring to transfer waste to external sites.

In response, "the comrades appeal to all forces that can come to help them block the incinerator," a source from the CGT Energy told AFP.

An end to the conflict is also emerging in the fifteenth arrondissement of the capital, where agents of the private provider, Pizzorno Environment, were also on strike for nearly a month.

The management of the company announced that it had signed Friday "with the union representatives of the CGT a protocol of exit from strike", which allows "the resumption of work of striking staff" and "the complete resumption of waste collection".

This recovery, combined with the reopening of the nearby Issy site and the reinforcement of "additional staff, and this throughout the weekend", will allow "to treat the 1,000 tons of residual waste and accelerate the gradual return to normal", welcomed the mayor LR of the fifteenth, Philippe Goujon, in a statement.

Further in the center of Paris, Thursday evening, dozens of garbage cans had been set on fire in narrow streets of the Opera district, among the many violence and clashes with the police that punctuated the day of mobilization against the pension reform.

© 2023 AFP