PARIS: Paris’s Louvre Museum was closed yesterday due to a walkout by some staff over a rise in aggressive pickpockets including children sometimes working in gangs of up to 30, staff and management said.
Disappointed tourists waited in vain in front of the famed museum, home to works of art such as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, which receives some 10 million visitors a year. Christelle Guyader of the SUD union said staff had staged the walkout as they were fed up with dealing with the often-violent thieves.
“Sometimes they come to work afraid because they find themselves confronted with organised groups of pickpockets who are increasingly aggressive and which include children, who get into the museum free and even when taken in for questioning by police, come back a few days later,” she said.
Numerous staff had reported “spitting, insults, threats and being struck”, by the pickpockets and had repeatedly reported the incidents, Guyader said.
The museum — one of the world’s largest and most-visited — said it lodged a complaint with prosecutors late last year over the problem and demanded a greater police presence.
Monika Kreuzig, an Austrian teacher accompanying a group of pupils on a visit to the gallery, said they had waited in front of the Louvre’s glass pyramid for over an hour.
She said she was “very disappointed” as her group might not be able to return as they had to leave the city within days. Staff said the pickpockets were often children from eastern Europe operating in gangs of up to 30.
AFP
