Call to tidy up ‘pigsty’ courts
Lawyers in Thessaloniki are up in arms as the slow-moving renovation of the city’s main courthouses is forcing them to work amid construction site debris. The city’s bar association has appealed to the firm managing the renovation to speed up the project and clear the courtrooms of rubble, old pipes and discarded furniture. «Apart from being aesthetically displeasing, it poses a risk for workers and visitors,» the association said. The association’s president Manolis Lamtzidis said the rubble «makes the courthouses look like a pigsty» and that he could not understand why it had not been cleared away. «No one objects to the removal of all this material,» he said. Meanwhile another problem with the building has created another deadlock. A team of state technical engineers has called for the immediate transfer of legal archives to basement rooms, noting that the current concentration of their weight on one spot posed a stability threat. Lawyers object, saying the building’s basement rooms are used by the bar association.
