October 5, 2018
Unions of workers at Greece’s archeological sites and museums have called for a 24-hour strike to protest the trasnfer of several public museums and sites to the country’s Privatization Fund. The strike is scheduled for 11. October 2018.
The protest is likely to close the ancient Acropolis in Athens that day along with multiple sites around Greece that are popular with tourists, notes ap.
The union announced the strike Thursday. It accused the Greek government of failing to list publicly-owned properties that have been transferred to a powerful privatization fund created during the country’s international bailouts.
The Culture Ministry has disputed allegations made by the union and others that sites of historic and archaeological significance are included in the properties controlled by the fund.
With a decision of the Finance Ministry more than 10,000 public properties were transferred to the Privatization Fund in early September.
Among those properties are monuments and museums in Chania in West Crete. For example, the new Archaeological Museum, the archaeological museum located inside the St Francis Church, the National Museum Eleftherios Venizelos, the Historical Archive of Crete, several Venetian and Byzantine moats, fortifications and bastions as well as properties where important Minoan architectural remains have been discovered.
Up to date, the Finance Ministry has obviously not made any moves to exempt those properties from the Privatization plans, therefore the strike.
