Athens 27 Jun (ANA) - Sacks of rubbish and rotting vegetables piled high on the pavements of the Greece capital Athens have started spewing out onto the streets in 94F (34C) heat as workers clashed with riot police over austerity cuts. The mounting labour dispute is fast turning into a public health crisis in port of Piraeus and with temperatures expected to soar to 107F (42C) towards the end of the week, the issue appears only to be getting worse. Insects, rats and stray cats and dogs have taken to picking at the overflowing garbage and the ugly clashes have left many residents losing sympathy for the public workers who are entering their second week of mass walkouts. The strikers fear job losses as Greece wrestles with its seventh year of austerity demanded by international creditors. More specifically, the workers want better terms for short-term staff threatened, they say, by a court order banning extensions to their contracts. Many residents, battered by the same spending cuts, were sympathetic at the start. 

But that support has come under strain as the rubbish bags pile up in the baking summer sun. Across the capital and other cities, residents have reported growing numbers of insects, rats, stray cats and dogs, all of them carriers of infection. Authorities have asked people to keep their trash at home, though for flat-dwellers like Fotini Papadaki, there is only so much room on their balconies.(ANA)

FA/ANA/27 June 2017-------