The public sector of agony…

The Ministry of Administrative Reform denies categorically that troika has asked for more layoffs or additional retirements of civil servants beyond the 150,000 already agreed upon by 2015.

According to reports, no reference was made to further layoffs during the meeting of political leaders and the representatives of lenders, while upon their leaving the representatives announced a meeting with minister Dimitris Reppas for January, when they return.

However, scenarios about new redundancies returned back after yesterday's speech by the IMF representative Paul Thomsen. Speaking at the conference of the Hellenic-American Chamber on the Greek economy, he said that the government should move aggressively towards the reduction of employees in the public sector and spoke of "non-voluntary departures of workers from public services."

Despite these announcements, the ministry insisted that this will not be necessary. Indeed, they reported that 43,000 civil servants left in 2010 and by the end of 2011 they will reach about 55,000. These include those who retire and those who go into pre-retirement or redundancy status, while the rule that for every five retirements there will be one hiring continues to apply.

Senior ministry officials believe that the difficult part is over, since the Greek government has agreed to withdraw 50,000 employees by 2015.

This will be discussed inn today’s cabinet meeting. Dimitris Reppas will speak on the subject, since a lot of ministers are alarmed by Thomsen’s statements.

However, apart from the ministry of administrative reform, the Troika did not ask for an increase in the number of layoffs from the relevant finance ministry unless this is reserved for Friday, when they meet again with minister Venizelos.