As the price of electricity goes up in the new year fewer services will be available. One sector that will feel the pinch are icerinks. The owners of the Sursee and Küssnacht icerinks are looking at their forecast rising electricity bills with concern and are not sure whether they will be able to afford to keep the icerinks open much beyond the new year.
The wonderful LiLu Lightfestival which takes place downtown Lucerne every January will go ahead but one of its greatest attraction, the illumination of the Chapel Bridge Tower will not be happening, which will save 30% of the electricity usually required to run the festival.
Human trafficking is becoming ever more of an issue in Switzerland. In 2021, 492 people were rescued from human trafficking situations, this is a 50% increase to 2019. It is mostly women who are trafficked into either prostitution or homecare, whereas men often end up working in the construction or gastronomy fields. Others are forced to beg or steal. Victims often come from Nigeria, Brasil, Romania and Hungary amongst other countries. Anyone needing help or advice can get it on this website.
Air pilots from the company Swiss are threatening to go on strike at the end of this month. This is because negotiations to update their contracts to take into account the pandemic broke down in February 2021 and things have been at a stalemate ever since. Negotiations are due to resume on October 22 & 23. Should these not prove successful, pilots could begin a strike as soon as the next day. Here is hoping that both parties bring reasonable demands and solutions to the table then.
The police in Uri dismantled a cannabis farm in Bürglen. They found several kilos of dried and packaged marijuana as well as haschich, cannabis plants for resale as well as several thousand francs in cash.
October is usually the month to switch to winter tyres. If you haven’t already done so, book your slot as winter tyres are about to become more expensive as fewer have been produced this year and garages may run out of them sooner than later.
