afrol News, 8 January - Several heavy goods vehicle workers have been injured during a clash with riot police in the capital Algiers while holding a protest to demand better wages and benefits.

The truckers working for the National Industrial Vehicles Company (SNVI) have been on strike since Sunday to push for higher pay.

Algerian officials said hundreds of striking protesters were trying to march in the center of Rouiba, an industrial suburb east of the capital, Algiers when they were intercepted by the police.

The workers have vowed to continue with the strike until their demands are met by the employer.

However, the management of SNVI said that the strikers' demands are beyond its means, saying that there's no dialogue with the management of the company or the government.

The government at the end of 2009 decided to cancel the possibility for SNVI workers to take early retirement, which they had been able to since the end of 1990s.

In Algeria, teachers and public health workers have held strikes for the past three weeks, demanding salary raises.

The minimum wage was recently raised from 15,000 dinars to 18,000 dinars a month, or about $250, but workers complain that inflation has eaten up the increase and say the government has failed to translate the country's natural gas and oil riches into general prosperity.

Algeria has been battered by violence over the past half-century and has recently emerged from a brutal internal conflict that followed scrapped elections in 1992.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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