The civil servants, represented by the ANEF union, also demand the establishment of a monthly minimum wage of 250,000 pesos ($460) and regularised status for temporary workers and contractors, who don’t receive health coverage or other benefits.

The 48-hour strike has caused problems for the people in state agencies.

It has also halted activity in hospitals and doctors’ offices, where according to the unions, 80 percent of the workers have joined the strike, though skeleton crews remained on duty to deal with emergencies.

ANEF leader Raul de la Puente accused the ministers of finance, Andres Velasco, and of labour, Claudia Serrano, of not keeping President Michelle Bachelet’s promise to improve working conditions for civil servants.

De la Puente also considered ‘unacceptable’ the government’s offer of a 2.5 percent wage increase for 2010.

‘The negotiation will be difficult if we’re starting from this basis,’ he said.

Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma criticised the strike by pointing out that talks are already underway between the authorities and union leaders.

‘This is something that has no justification. The only ones who will be hurt here are those who use public services,’ Perez Yoma said, adding that the call to go on strike was an ‘extremely bad’ decision.

Easter Island is 163.6 square km in size and was declared by Unesco to be a World Heritage Site. It is located in the Pacific Ocean about 3,500 km from mainland Chile.

A total of 706 members of the Rapanui tribe, of the roughly 1,300 who comprise the electorate, participated Saturday in the popular referendum, the first to be held in Chilean territory.

Of those who participated, 678 (96.3 percent) voted in favour of undertaking a constitutional reform to regulate whether visitors to the island will be allowed to stay and for how long. Twenty-six people voted against the measure and two of the ballots cast were declared to be null.

The government will now be able to send to Congress a bill to modify Article 126 of the constitution with the aim of authorising special powers for the island’s institutions to set specific rules regulating the size and composition of the local population.

The number of the island’s residents has multiplied rapidly in recent years and now exceeds 4,000, a number that – for the original 2,000 or so islanders – is excessive and puts the remote territory’s environment and culture at risk.

To those must be added the more than 50,000 tourists who come to the island each year attracted by the unique ‘moais’, the huge stone head statues that have become the island’s distinctive symbols.