Acropolis guards irked at ticketing outsourcing
Archaeological site guards walked off the job for four hours until noon on Tuesday to express their opposition to government plans to outsource ticketing for the Acropolis.
Their union, PEYFA, argues that the state should retain control of ticketing and admissions to the country’s top archaeological site, and should hire additional staff to manage swelling visitor numbers and the new electronic system booking visits at appointed time slots.
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni suggested in a recent interview that guards “are obviously annoyed about being cut off from the ticket tills,” a claim PEYFA has responded to by expressing concerns about mismanagement of funds by private companies.
The row between the union and the ministry broke out after the Cultural Resources Management and Development Organization (ODAP) announced its intention to launch a tender for hiring a private company to manage the task of selling tickets and organizing visitors at the Acropolis, which has been struggling with long queues in recent years, particularly during the peak tourism season.
The splendid 2,500-year-old citadel received around 14,000 people a day at the start of last summer, a number that swelled to more than 20,000 in August.
