Thousands of disabled benefit claimants in crisis-hit Greece will be asked to register themselves after state officials discovered mass cases of suspected fraud, a report said Saturday. After months of research, Greece’s health ministry said it had found entire areas with suspiciously high incidences of particular ailments, the Kathimerini daily said. The region of Viotia in central Greece has an inordinately high number of asthma sufferers while the island of Kalymnos is apparently ridden with mental illness.
Similarly, deputy health minister Markos Bolaris in August ordered a probe after more than 600 people on the popular tourist island of Zante — around 1.5 percent of the population — were found to receive aid for the blind.
Bolaris later noted that more than 1,000 people in Greece’s second city Thessaloniki were listed as heavily disabled, a number “that would have been appropriate if Greece had fought in the Vietnam War.”
Some 210,000 people are earmarked for benefits, a “provocatively” high number which likely entails multiple registrations, Bolaris told the paper.
Following the new census to be carried out in February and March, authorities are hoping to trim at least 250 million euros from a total 6.2 billion euros ($7.9 billion) spent annually on social welfare benefits, Kathimerini said.
The Greek government has imposed a general drive of cutbacks and austerity measures ordered under pressure from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund after the country nearly went bankrupt in 2010.
Chaotic account-keeping has led to massive waste of state funds for decades.
Last year, labour ministry officials revealed that millions of euros annually had been spent on retirement payments to long-dead pensioners. More than 1,473 phantom pensioners were found receiving benefits despite being dead, highlighting the widespread welfare fraud facing the debt-ridden country.
Greece’s generous welfare state and bloated public sector have been blamed as root causes of a debt running at nearly 1.6 times its economic output. The tottering pension system, propped up by an EU/IMF-backed reform last year, is owed some 11 billion euros in contributions by companies and pensioners. Efforts to return it to health are being hampered, however, by unemployment running at a record level of over 16 percent. Labor Minister George Koutroumanis, a union leader turned politician, said that every percentage point increase in unemployment was costing pension funds 320 million euros a year in lost contributions.
Greece’s patchwork system of early retirement has contributed to the out-of-control state spending that has led to Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. Its pension promises will grow sharply in coming years, and investors can see the country has not set aside enough to cover those costs, making it harder for Greece to borrow at a reasonable rate.
As a consequence of decades of bargains struck between strong unions and weak governments, Greece has promised early retirement to about 700,000 employees, or 14 percent of its work force, giving it an average retirement age of 61, one of the lowest in Europe.
The law includes dangerous jobs like coal mining and bomb disposal. But it also covers radio and television presenters (!), who are thought to be at risk from the bacteria on their microphones, and musicians playing wind instruments, who must contend with gastric reflux as they puff and blow.
(Source: The Daily Star, Reuters, NYT)
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
