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Today as well there will be some electricity supply restrictions and the fire trucks in Athens are staying alert since the morning because of the many people who remained trapped in elevators because of the special electricity disconnection. The plan according to which the electricity will be stopped in one hour intervals most probably between the hours of 18:30 and 21:30 in the evening as it was also yesterday is yet expected.

The 48 hours strike of the employees of the National electricity company continues today as well. Their union members symbolically occupied the central offices of the National electricity company located on Halkokondili str. in Athens and did not allow the rest of the employees to enter in the building. Other offices of the company throughout the country were also symbolically occupied.

The result from the strike is that yesterday in 350 regions of the country there were electricity supply restrictions and today it is possible that the situation gets even worse. The national electrically supply of the country has decreased by 39% of its total power (a total number of 19 power stations have stopped working and have deprived the country of 4 740 megawatts of the total 12 100 megawatts that are necessary), so the restriction of the supply of electricity was inevitable. In spite of the fact that Greece imported electricity from Italy and Bulgaria it didn’t manage to cover the needs of electricity in the evening hours. The system had available 7 300 megawatts while at 9 o’clock in the evening it needed 7 600 megawatts. Today Greece again asked Italy for additional supply of electricity for the country especially during the afternoon hours.

The electricity supply restrictions will continue today as well due to the strike of the employees of the Electrical Company. They are protesting against the cuts of part of their salaries and pensions as well as against the fact that the government has frozen the signing of new contracts with new employees.

Today the union members have a meeting with the Minister of employment Andreas Loverdos and they will talk about the pension security bureau of the National electricity company. From the beginning of the year the pension security bureau of the employees had to take from the national budget 879 million euro for the payment of pensions, social allowances and bonuses, however the government only approved 710 million euro and promised that the rest of the money will be paid by the end of the year.

In the strike for the first time are taking part also the directors as these measures are also affecting their salaries because of the newly introduced by the government upper limit of payment. This regulation affects over 200 directors who are losing between 20% and 55% of their salaries. Besides them another 600 technicians and workers from the mines are also affected because they work in shifts and as there is a great lack of staff for them the overtime work is a normal phenomenon. In this way their salaries could reach 7000 – 8000 euro.