ATHENS – Greece’s capital has developed a buzz drawing tourists who once shunned it en route to islands, now attracted by funky neighborhoods, coffee shops and unique eateries but there’s a common complaint: the city is filthy.

A walking or tour bus guide reveals building after dirty concrete building covered by years of grime or graffiti, unswept streets and in one of the main public areas, Omonia Square – near City Hall – drug users proliferate and crime is evident.

To deal with the problem, new Athens Mayor Haris Doukas has created a Municipal Cleanliness Police force that will check for regular rubbish pickup to prevent bins from overflowing and try to make sure areas are cleaned.

Deputy Mayor for Cleanliness and Recycling of the Municipality of Athens Roxani Bei told Athens Radio 98.4 that the squad, however, won’t have enforcement authority or impose fines but just be advisory.

It wasn’ said how that would work if violators ignore what they’re being told with some waste pickup bins seeing overflowing garbage on the streets that’s a health hazard and unsightly, especially during summer heat.

She also said there’s a problem in her own division because there’s not enough staff and that there’s such a need for rubbish collection that 12 are carried out daily in the main commercial area.

Athens uses a system of having residents deposit rubbish in bins, not put out in bags or metal containers on the streets, and there are separate recycling bins – some filled with rubbish – and for food waste.

“By the fall, the cleanliness sector of Athens will have been reconstituted, in a way that will make it operational, with additional staff, and I am optimistic that if a specific strategy is followed regarding how we manage our waste, Athens will present a different image,” she said.

Complaints on social media about the city’s state of cleanliness are abundant, such as one posted in 2023 on Reddit by a couple who said that, “When we arrived  we noticed the city was quite dirty but we thought it was only that area, only to realize a lot of Athens is quite dirty.”

The reviews of Omonia are especially caustic with one tourist earlier this year posting that, “The square is dirty, noisy, and unsafe at night,” and that crime orries add to it. “It’s filled with suspicious characters,” he wrote.

Former Mayor Kostas Bakoyiannis embarked on a campaign to clean up parts of the city, including adding a much-criticized Grand Walk but in earlier years trees were yanked out of sidewalks in the rich area of Kolonaki.