HA! If that’s not a provocation for the majority of Greeks especially those in the private sector struggling to make ends meet… Parliament speaker Vyron Polydoras approved to pay to parliament personnel an flat allowance of 1,000 euro due to overtime work because of the two elections in May and June.
What is even more striking is that the 1,300 parliament employees should have received 4,000 euro but Polydoras – who was speaker only for one month – decided to give the allowance ‘cut’ by 75% due to the economic situation.
Why do the parliament employees receive this allowance? Because some of them have to work overtime in order to wrtie down the new composition of the Parliament after every election.
Why all the 1,300 employees have to receive this allowance when only some of them work overtime? Oh, that’s the tradition of the Greek public sector: first a group of employees get an allowance for pc usage, for example, soon the whole section gets it.
And it comes even worse: The elections allowance of 2,000 euro is not apporved by law but it became customary after a parliament speaker decision some years ago.
The news about the 1,000-euro bonus for the Parliament employees – and thus for time when the Parliament was closed for two months due to elections – triggered an outrage among the Greeks. and the media spoke of a “provocation” and “challenge”
“What? 1,000 euro for doing what?” said a woman in a TV report of a private channel and another stressed “Thousand euro? Nowadays?”
Parliament employees who were asked seem to not understand what’s the outrage about. “why not? We have to work overtime,” said a young employee.
After the outrage for the special “financial treatment” that would cost the state 1.3 million euro, PM Antonis Samaras advised the new Parliament speaker Evangelos Meimarakis to find ways and cancel Polydoras’ decision.
PS Nice Greek world where some people live in a parallel universe and never heard of an economic crisis.
