Some 15,000 workers will be dismissed from the public sector by the end of 2014, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s Minister of Administrative Reform, has reported as the government moves to meet the demands of international lenders to pare the heavily-bloated workforce.
While many of Greece’s public servants got their jobs through political connections, Mitsotakis said those who have performed well will be kept but the government still hasn’t acted to remove those who have been disciplined, reprimanded, faked their credentials, don’t come to work or have committed felonies, including murder, and are still getting paid.
Mitsotakis said there were no problems with other Ministers as far as composing lists of employees to be inducted in the so-called mobility program in which they will get 75 percent of their already-reduced pay and then fired if another position can’t be found for them within eight months.
He said if politicians try to interfere, he will contact Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who during his administration was accused of making at least 30 high level political appointments to the former public broadcaster ERT, which he shut down on June 11, firing all 2,656 workers.
Concerning the number of those who will be in the public sector after 2015, the Minister estimated that there will be less than 600,000 employees, based on pensions and the 1-to-5 recruitment/dismissal ratio. “It is not a matter of numbers; (it) has to do with the public sector’s services and its performance,” Mitsotakis said.
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