Eiffel Tower closes over pickpockets
Print Edition
PARIS’S iconic Eiffel Tower was shut to tourists yesterday as staff walked off the job to protest against a surge in gangs of pickpockets roaming around the monument.
The closure of one of the busiest tourist attractions in the French capital ahead of a long weekend recalls a similar strike at the Louvre museum in 2013 as staff protested often violent pickpockets stalking its halls.
Workers at the 126-year-old iron tower said in a statement they had chosen to down tools due to an “increase in pickpockets around the Eiffel Tower and several threats and assaults.”
They said they want “formal guarantees from management that lasting and effective measures will be taken to end this scourge to which numerous tourists fall victim every day.”
The pickpockets “form a gang of four or five people. Sometimes there can be around 30,” one worker said.
Another said he had been threatened while chasing away a pickpocket: “He said to me: ‘Why don’t you let us work ... if this continues you will have problems.’”
The company managing the monument said in a statement it “regrets that visitors already present are being punished.”
It said management was working with police to take measures “guaranteeing the security of staff and public.”
Paris, which received 22 million visitors in 2014 according to city figures, attracts many tricksters and pickpockets.
Particularly targeted are Asian tourists, due to a rise in wealthy travelers from countries such as China. After complaints about muggings and attacks of Chinese tourists, the French interior ministry last year had Chinese police help patrol tourist destinations in Paris.
The Liberation daily newspaper reported yesterday that some 26,000 police and municipal agents would be deployed onto the streets of Paris this summer to deal with pickpockets.
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