ATHENS: Thousands of protesters marched in Athens and other Greek cities on Wednesday against a new raft of austerity measures planned by the government which seeks to forestall a costly debt overhaul.
The bulk of demonstrators gathered in the capital for separate Union organised marches amid a general strike that shut down state services halted maritime and train traffic and disrupted flights.
"We strike to show our anger and our opposition to the policies that arebeing introduced and new measures that hit workers and labour instead of thosewith money," said Stathis Anestis, a senior member of the confederation of Greek workers, the country's main union.
The Socialist government, which is struggling to limit slippage on tough austerity targets during a deep recession, has unveiled a new round of austerity measures to 2015 to keep Greece's recession-hit economy afloat.
But unions say that a recovery plan applied by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund after they rescued Greece from bankruptcy last year with a massive loan has made things worse for millions of Greeks.
"After a year we find ourselves in a worse situation," Anestis said.
"Unemployment has skyrocketed, salaries are at their lowest point and there is no breakthrough in sight," he told protesters.
Greece last year pledged to put its economy in order after taking a 110-billion-euro ($158-billion) loan from the EU and the IMF to avert insolvency.
But despite a huge effort in 2010, it eventually overshot its deficit reduction goals because the economy shrank faster than expected.
The government has now rolled out a new programme to economise some 26 billion euros over three years to help bring down the country's enormous debt.
It also plans to sell a first batch of state assets worth 15 billion euros including stakes in several public corporations.
Athens' overall debt has exploded to 340 billion euros, leading to mounting speculation even from Greek officials that it will need alternative options to keep up with repayments when the EU-IMF loan runs out in 2013.
Experts from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank (ECB) are currently in Athens for a scheduled audit of finances and reforms to determine if it merits a critical new 12-billion-euro slice of funding from last year's bailout package.
"The most possible scenario is that additional measures are going to be taken," said Michael Vassiliadis, a researcher at the Greek foundation for economic and industrial research (IOBE).
"We have already heard of additional measures of about 3 billion euros both on the revenue and the expenditure side of the fiscal balance," he told AFP.
Senior EU and Greek officials have denied that any debt restructuring is on the agenda, although eurozone officials have begun to admit that Greece is likely to need more aid in some form.
At the weekend the head of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance minister Jean-Claude Juncker said that "we think that Greece does need a further adjustment programme".
And an EU source told AFP on Monday that eurozone ministers were considering extra help for next year which would be in exchange of new budget constraints from Greece.
With Greece unlikely to be able to raise money on financial markets next year as initially planned, there has been increasing speculation it will need another 60 billion euros.
European Union Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, who is the top EU official behind bailout negotiations, said a decision on further aid is a few weeks away pending the result of the joint audit.
The EU bloc's economic frontrunner Germany has also called for decisions to be taken after the EU-IMF mission delivers its report.
"We'll have to wait until June and the handing over of the report," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told journalists in Berlin.
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