Euro zone delays bailout tranche to Greece due to 80 less teachers to be dismissed

On Wednesday I read in Greek media, the Euro zone minister (Euro Working Group) gave the green light for the 2.5 billion Greek bailout tranche. On Thursday I read that the euro zone has delayed its decision on whether to approve its next aid payment for Greece until Friday after Athens failed to fulfill all the conditions it had set out earlier this month.

So why the confusion? Where is the money we borrow in order to pay back our lenders?

It looks as if the EuroWorkingGroup was mainly satisfied with the Greek efforts to meet Troika-imposed targets and fulfill the bailout conditions. However, the EWG made a shocking discovery:

Greece had fulfilled only 21 out of 22 required conditions!

What was Greece’s sin? The debt-ridden country had submitted a list of 4,200 civil servants needed to be sent home under the labor reserve scheme and be dismissed after a period of nine months. But the impossible had happened.

The list contained not 4,200 civil servants needed to be dismissed but 4, 120.

Yes! Eighty people less! Reason enough for beans-counter Schaeuble & Co to delay the bailout tranche for Greece until Athens puts on the list another 80 people.

It looks as if the load of correcting the list lays heavy on the shoulders of the Education minister. He had a plan to get rid of 2,000 technical and vocational high school teachers. He had exempted from the ‘labor reserve’ teachers with post-graduate studies or PhD diplomas.

Those damned 80 teachers were holders of Master’s and PhD.

Under the threat of ruining the country, Education Minister Arvanitopoulos withdrew the exemptions.

One of the teachers to be dismissed commented on a Greek internet site:

“As one of the teachers of Vocational Education put on labor reserve, I feel proud that our dismissal will save the country by securing the needed tranche! It doesn’t matter that I have a university degree and a Master’s (that exhausted me financially but mostly spiritually) and that I got my job through the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection (ASEP) leaving the profession of self-employed in the private sector because I loved teaching…

I can never be a teacher again. The minister cancelled me with a single decision. Me and another 2,500.”

Writing about the success of technical schools especially in the sections of Nursing, Physiotherapy, Hairdressing and Cosmetics, the teacher sharply criticizes the fact that dissolving a great number of the technical schools departments, the students will be forced to take classes in private schools for up to 1,000 euro annual fees and thus in times of strict austerity and deepest recession.

What I do not understand in the decision about dissolving the technical and vocational schools is this:

1) Why doesn’t the Troika want that there are hairdressers in Greece? Should we go around unkempt in a permanent bad-hair day in times of economic crisis?

2) Who are these super-powerful ministers who take decisions that destroy the country?

PS I may be poor but I can’t give up my natural stylish chic.

that’s NOT me!

On EWG decision see also WSJ