2023-07-06 17:57:35
What is this curse that has befallen Marseille transport in recent days? After the interruption of service of twenty-four bus lines from the Rose depot on Tuesday due to a proliferation of cockroaches, the agents are launching the alert following an invasion of bed bugs in the metro. Not in the trains, but in the driver’s cabins. An unprecedented infestation that the sniffer dogs dispatched to the site confirmed.
“It’s been over three weeks since this startedexplains Jennifer Dassori, from the FO union at the RTM. We quickly reported it to the management who did not take things seriously enough and now we are wondering how we are going to get out of all this.“According to the trade unionist, all trains are concerned:”The dressing rooms are very degraded, some seats have been replaced, a company carried out the disinfestation three weeks ago“, but the discovery of new bugs prompted her to intervene a second time three days later.”The management is putting pressure on us to continue working despite these conditions, but drivers have been stung, others have reacted, some have taken them home and many are scared today.” With a direct consequence on the rate of absenteeism: “Twenty-five agents are on sick leave out of eighty drivers“, assures Jennifer Dassori. The right of withdrawal cannot be exercised, because if the health risk is real, it is not a situation presenting a serious and imminent danger to the life or health of the agents.
“Officers have brought bed bugs home, all come to work with a lump in their stomachs.”
“The problem is that three agents brought bedbugs homeadds Nicolas Ruiz, secretary general FO at the RTM. They had to pay more than 500 euros each to treat their home and not only is this not covered by the RTM while the bedbugs clearly come from the cabin, but in addition, the risk of a new infestation is real.“Corrupted for fifteen years by humidity, wear and rats, gutted, revealing the foam when it is not the springs of the seat, the driver’s seats have been the subject of a request for replacement by FO a year ago. Request which was only recently heard, regrets the union: given the urgency of the situation, ten seats out of fifty have been replaced by tram seats .
To get rid of these pests like cockroaches in buses and metro trains – “particularly numerous this year and present both in the buses of the depot of the Rose and in that of Arenc“, insists Nicolas Ruiz -, the FO union asks that the management call on a professional company. “The means implemented by Onet, which is the cleaning and nebulization service provider for the RTM, are insufficient, deplores the Secretary General. Three interventions have not made it possible to overcome the problem at the Rose and the management forces the agents to take their service even when they are driving in infested buses, to the detriment of working conditions and users..” The trade unionist notes that “in recent weeks, reports of customers traveling in the company of cockroaches have multiplied. How can we envisage transporting the population in such conditions? How will we do during the matches of the Rugby World Cup in September, and next summer for the hosting of the Olympic Games events?“, he wonders.
Contacted, the RTM did not respond to our requests.
Meanwhile, in Saint-Charles… Chain failures on the new escalator
Right at noon, Saint-Charles metro station. Sighs are heard: the central escalator is “encore” broke down. It is Wednesday and an uninterrupted flow of users crosses the metro station to reach the station. To access it from line 1, three imposing escalators of 50 meters each have emerged. They are open at public since July 1 following six months of work, but since their commissioning, the problems have only been linked.
“It’s not functionalsighs Miriam. This morning, I saw a woman once more who was very upset. It was loaded and with small children…“, says this Marseillaise who passes every day in Saint-Charles. After a few hours of operation only, the escalator on the left, the only one allowing to go down from the station to the metro, came to a standstill last Saturday. The teams of maintenance put it back on the road on Monday, before it broke down once more the next day.
“Last night, Tuesday, it was already blocked, so this morning we had to go all the way because we knew it was going to be the same“, explains in a weary tone Souleman. Nod from Kadi, at his side.
And two! Once repaired, it is then the turn of the central escalator – which goes up – to play its own. “It is not normal. Plus they pulled the shuttle“, adds Myriam. With the start of the work, a replacement shuttle was put in place. Every ten minutes, it made the metro-station trip, allowing people in charge of easy access to the latter. Thus, no need to climb the vast external staircase of the station or to take the detour of 200 meters.The evening before the opening of the stairs, the RTM removed this shuttle – without assuming the possible technical damage.
12:50 p.m. Everything is moving on the left side of the escalator, but the middle one is once more stopped for the third time since this morning. Like Ouattara, you have to hope to be lucky and go to Saint-Charles when the escalators are working. “Now it seems to work. There is no longer a problem for strollers, she says. There are just the last four steps when leaving the metro which are still complicated“, ends in a
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