"There will be no civil servant redundancies"

For the second time, during the Parliamentary Plenary session, the Interior Minister Mr John Ragousis is refuting every scenario that speaks of the dismissal of civil servants. Furthermore, during the House discussion on the e-government bill, Mr. Ragousis clarified that “there is no prospect of redundancies”, explaining that “today we are faced neither with a dilemma nor raw blackmail: either dismiss civil servants or we will stop lending you money.

According to the minister, the policy which applies to the public sector will continue over the next three years, aiming to reduce the number of civil servants by 150000 not through layoffs, but by means of retirements and voluntary exits. “Since 5.10.09, before the Troika, we have been implementing an unprecedented reduction of people paid by the Greek government, and we have being doing that while dealing with the needs of government, not the party's… From wage expenditure of 23 billion, we are now down to 16 billion. We now have one of the lowest public administration systems regarding salaries.

“This policy, which we have formed since the 2009 elections, is the reason the Troika never raised the issue of dismissal of permanent of open-ended contract personnel”.

The transfer situation and who will be expelled from the public sector.

In addition, the minister stated that transfers will be made through ASEP, which is why “some people may actually not be judged worthy to be transferred to the public sector. There must be a filter defininf who is worthy and who is not. The evaluation in itself will be our goal”. He also stressed that “we will bring new disciplinary measures which will end the state’s impunity, according to which whoever has committed a disciplinary offense cannot be transferred”.

Mr. Ragousis explained what exactly will take place with transfers but also with the civil servants in departments that will be closed down. Specifically, the minister clarified that if an employee is not deemed worthy by ASEP, then the transfer will not take place and he or she will return to their former service.

If this service has been shut down, then the employee loses their job. Moreover, he mentioned that if any employee has committed a disciplinary offense, then they cannot even submit a transfer request.

In addition to the above, Mr. Ragousis revelaed that a new disciplinary act will be submitted to Parliament within the next month, before the enactment of the bill for a single payroll, which among other things also changes the composition of the disciplinary council, which currently consists of representatives and colleagues of workers.

Furthermore, Mr. Ragousis stated that five-member disciplinary committees will be formed consisting of one judge, two NSK members and two directions who will not belong to the same entity as that which the auditee serves in.