THE CITY OF Athens has ground to a halt for the start of a two-day strike against austerity measures, with public transport ground to halt.

The strike, the third in six weeks, comes a day before parliament is to vote on a new raft of cuts needed to get international aid to avoid default.

Flights to and from the country stopped this morning at the start of a 48-hour strike that has closed schools, halted train and ferry services, and kept hospitals running on emergency staff only.

Two days of demonstrations started this morning continuing until lawmakers vote late tomorrow on the bill to slash €13.5 billion from budget spending over the next two years.

Tourists pass in front of docked ships at the port of Piraeus, near Athens during a 48-hour nationwide strike. Image: Petros Giannakouris/AP/Press Association Images.

Conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is facing his first serious crisis since he formed the coalition government in June as Socialist and left-wing members lawmakers threaten to vote against the austerity package.

The deeply unpopular measures include new deep pension cuts and tax hikes, a two-year increase in the retirement age to 67, and laws that will make it easier to fire and transfer civil servants. The country is suffering in a deep recession set to enter a sixth year, and record high unemployment of 25 per cent.

If Parliament rejects the package, Greece will lose access to the rescue loans from the European Union and International Monetary Fund that have kept it afloat since May 2010.

The country would then run out of money as soon as by November 16, according to Samaras, default on its debts and, most likely, abandon the 17-member eurozone. The ensuing hyperinflation and currency depreciation would intensify domestic misery.

The international repercussions would also be severe, amid fears that other troubled eurozone members could follow Greece’s lead.

- AP

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