Rough clashes at the cabinet meeting

The issues relating to public administration and civil servants led to a battle of ministers at the cabinet meeting. Andreas Loverdos, Anna Diamantopoulou, Miltiadis Papaioannou and Makis Voridis brought strong criticism on the administrative reform minister Dimitris Reppas regarding redundancy.

The criticism of the four ministers focused on the difficulty of applying the measure of redundancy, while some spoke of program failure.

Evangelos Venizelos and Dimitris Reppas attacked Yiannis Ragoussis for his period in the interior ministry. They criticized the census of civil servants and deemed it as virtual and more of a communication trick, blaming the former minister for the difficulty of the redundancy measure.

However, the census came mainly from the finance ministry and Papakonstantinou, and payment of public employees has been based on it for this last year and a half.

Besides all this, Venizelos briefed the cabinet members on his discussion with the Troika, which he called preliminary and said there has been no discussion of new measures so far. He added that discussions are only about reforms.

Papademos stressed that it is necessary to proceed with all reforms in the next three weeks and asked ministers to clarify their priorities in view of his new appointment with the Troika between January 15-20.

Administrative reform minister Dimitris Reppas spoke of the executive state that will allow the devolution of powers to simplify bureaucratic procedures and the Hermes program.

Besides the burning issue of the extension for another year on the ban of property auctions, the cabinet agreed on a number of other emergency interventions related to the implementation of the mid-term and the adjustment program that will be implemented via legal means.

It approved arrangements for employment and redundancy for the State and the implementation of the Public Investment Program. It pledged to ensure the smooth and uninterrupted payment of remuneration, both for permanent staff on a private law employment relationship of indefinite duration employed in the Regions and the staff transferred to municipalities, with the relevant expenditure covered by the state budget under certain conditions.

Similarly, it decided to extend the current status of the operating costs of EL.STAT. for one year. It approved regulations to directly address the problems that may occur during the first operation of the new entity EOPYY, to ensure continuity of sickness benefits to insured persons and pensioners for the health sectors of IKA, ETAM, OAEE, OGA and OPAD, of smooth payment of salaries to all personnel transferred to EOPYY, of medical care of those insured in the health sectors of OAEE and OPAD and for claims of insurance agents against pharmaceutical companies.

Lastly, Papademos asked for two cabinet meetings next week, one for issues relating to the labour ministry and one for development.