Oaxaca police on strike over lack of payment

Around sixty police and traffic officers of Santa Lucía del Camino, a municipality neighboring the state capital of Oaxaca, went on strike yesterday over lack of payment of their salary for the month of December, as well as the omission of the yearly bonus paid in Mexico by all patrons according to the labor law.

The officers protested in the square of the Municipal Palace, where they displayed uniforms in poor conditions and covered their patrols with signs against the local authorities, who haven’t dispatched any services for the community in months, according to the protesters claims.

Additionally, they denounced the looting of public property, including fifty motorized units, by the municipal public servants, as well as the unexcused absence of the municipality’s mayor, Galdino Huerta Escudero, from the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), since January this year, when he ran for a local congress candidacy and failed to return to the municipality after the electoral process, leaving one of his subordinates, Óscar Segura Fuentes, in charge without compliance of any legal requirement for the post.

Since then, protesters explained that the police force has progressively decimated in Santa Lucía del Camino, one of the most populated municipalities of Oaxaca with over 50,000 residents.