Overcrowding. Fainting. Angry voices. Trampling. Raised Arms. Despair. Here nobody distributes bread in a refugee camp. Nobody gives free gold… The woman standing above the crowd distributes magic papers… priority numbers. So the crowd will receive certificates of disability. Many of the people – the majority of them seniors – have been waiting in the cold since the early morning hours. Outside the Municipality of Aigaleo, a suburb of Western Athens. Their martyrdom last four hours.
Video:
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The video is being broadcast by private Alpha TV. “Pictures of shame, like in a third-world country,” comments the news presenter.
The ‘pictures of shame’ wake up the deputy minister in charge, who immediately orders that these certificates will be sent to those eligible to receive one by mail.
Those who were lucky to get the magic priority numbers will be able to get their certificate until Wednesday. This is said on …Friday.
One of the …original ideas of the Greek bureaucracy is that one has to get a priority number days ahead. Sometimes weeks…
That’s Greece is times of austerity, where pensioners in the public service do not get replaced…
So, these poor souls had to go to Aigaleo to get a paper that states that they are handicapped. Not for checking on anything, just getting that piece of paper? And now, after a phone-call by the deputy minister they will get it by mail?
Why Aigaleo… don’t mind! All those who had something to do with thinking out this decision should be fired at once. They proofed to be utter idiots.
I assume they had submitted all the necessary papers, passed through the several committees etc. before.
Being a early pensioner, my self, due to illness, this makes me drop my jaw! And happy to be Danish!!
This is exactly the same as with the cancer/aids medicine: This are jobs for pro bike messengers! Triple rush delivery… will bring baq smiles
Elladastan! I’m sorry folks but what has this become???
The unelected anti democratic EU masters, Barroso, Van Rompuy, Schultz,Papademos,Monti etc. etc. should be ashamed. They should be forced to watch and held to account for what they are doing to the people of Europe.
@Amerikanaki & TedW – this has nothing to do with any ‘austerity’ or EU-masters. It’s what brought us here in the first place. This is just normal practise under the unelected anti democratic Byzantine Bureaucracy. It has been for decades and it will remain so for decades is no real chances are made here in Greece.
I know it is difficult to comprehend when you never had to deal with the monster called Greek Bureaucracy. I had the ‘pleasure’ of ones visiting Petrou Rally (where the biggest Alien Bureau is situated) and you had scenes just like these. I have had to collect my KYX-number plates for my imported car once on Messoghion: Just the same. And, oh yes, when we left the building with the plates after 5 visits, the building was evacuated because of a bomb-scare. And that made total sense to me by then.
I have seen total descent Greeks shout like madmen through small openings in large glass windows to civil servants who were just sitting reading their paper and drinking their coffee, out of pure despair. I still remember like yesterday, the ‘crocodile pit’, a name giving to that cellar by an employee, of a customs office in the north of Athens. They went with us down there to try and find two custom officers who would not rip us and our goods to shreds.
Just three examples out of an endless supply.
Because nothing fundamentally has changed in that respect in Greece, these kinds of spectacle are still commonplace. And these nitwits were and are totally unable to give one shred of counter to whatever foreign creditors are demanding.
“I know it is difficult to comprehend when you never had to deal with the monster called Greek Bureaucracy.”
In my previous life we had a phrase and a very important lesson: “Assumption is the mother of all fu**ups”
I have lived in Greece for 14 years – lesson, do not make assumptions.
So you know all these things and still made that comment? Then your remark is even more deplorable.
Is it deplorable to refer to the EU clique as unelected and undemocratic? I think not.