PARIS: The amount of trash uncollected on Paris streets due to a waste workers strike has surged to 10,000 tonnes, despite efforts to force them back to duty, authorities said on Friday.

The new estimate — up from 7,600 tonnes earlier in the week — comes after Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that strikers were being forced back under emergency powers designed to safeguard essential services.

An aide to Paris’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo denied the change, saying that “no lorries have been out on the public side”. The city’s municipal waste collectors began a strike and blockade of incinerators 12 days ago over Macron’s pensions reforms which will see them have to work until age 59, compared with 57 now.

They guarantee collections in around half of the capital’s 20 districts, with the others handled by private companies.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2023