Demonstrators march in the rain yesterday in Athens during the 24-hour general strike.

DPA/AFP/Athens

Transport was disrupted across Greece and services were shut down as unions held a 24-hour nationwide strike yesterday to protest further austerity cuts in exchange for bailout loans.
The strike, called by the country’s largest private and public sector unions, crippled air, sea and land transport. It also shut down state-run schools and forced hospitals and ambulance service to function with emergency staff.
Defying pouring rain, some 4,000 members of the Communist-affiliated union PAME marched to central Syntagma square, police said.
Another 1,000 protesters gathered outside the offices of the biggest union GSEE but the main demonstration was scrapped due to the weather.
“It is an unfortunate occurrence, the protest will not take place owing to the weather conditions,” a GSEE spokeswoman said.
Similar protests are being held in Greece’s second city Thessaloniki, with some 10,000 demonstrators taking part, according to police.
Dozens of flights were cancelled or rescheduled as air traffic controllers walked off the job for three hours. Ferries remained docked at ports across the country.
Hospitals were operating on reduced staff and several flights were cancelled because of work stoppages by civil aviation personnel.
Journalists also staged a five-hour walkout to 1300 GMT.
GSEE, which represents the private sector, said workers were “carrying on their struggle against pointless austerity policies”.
“The government and (creditors) are talking about fiscal gaps and deficits. But they don’t say that the big gap is in the social state and society,” GSEE chairman Yiannis Panagopoulos said in a statement.
Unions are protesting tax increases and salary and pension cuts demanded by the foreign lenders.
Critics said that they have crippled the economy and caused unemployment to soar beyond 27%.
The strike comes as the government and its bailout lenders are locked in tough negotiations about the size of the country’s 2014 deficit.
Athens insists the 2014 fiscal gap will be around 500mn euros ($675mn) and can be met through reforms to the social security system.
International lenders, however, are far less optimistic and see the shortfall at 1.2bn euros.
Negotiations with representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are also focused on reforms and privatisations Greece needs to implement to secure its next aid tranche totalling 1bn euros.
However they came at a stiff cost to Greeks.
In order to tap the bailout loans the Greek government had to raise taxes while cutting benefits, wages, and jobs.
“We will not stop. Our only hope lies in struggle,” Panagopoulos said.
On Tuesday, protesters heckled the auditors outside the finance ministry and a man was briefly detained after throwing coins at the car of the IMF mission’s chief.
A sizeable number of government deputies have also protested at plans to increase tax on agricultural land, a move that has put pressure on Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.
“This is a negotiation ... we should remove the notion that this is a war,” Samaras said in a televised interview late on Monday.