Unpaid for nearly two years while Members of Parliament and government officials haven’t missed a check, taxi drivers in Katerini, northern Greece, said that they will suspend the transportation of students to schools that are not served by school buses.
In many rural parts of Greece, the ministries of Transport and Interior subsidize taxis to commute children to schools where their numbers are not enough to merit the operation of school buses. “We have reached the end of our tether,” a spokesman for the Katerini cabbies told the Athens-Macedonia News Agency.
“We have run out of emotional and financial reserves to keep transporting students for free. We have yet to be paid for services rendered since 2011 and the current services are being conducted without a contract from the ministries, meaning that we have no guarantees,” said Giorgos Parthenidis.
Regional authorities in Central Macedonia are exploring ways out of the deadlock in cooperation with the ministries of Interior and Transport. It’s been common during Greece’s crushing economic crisis for the government not to pay for services while asking they be continued with no guarantee of being paid.
Meanwhile, workers at the Parliament continue to be exempted from more pay cuts despite Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ repeated vows to make them not be excluded from austerity measures he’s imposing on nearly everyone else.
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