The Greek government said it will try to weed out people who got their jobs by faking their qualifications and that they would face disciplinary action, but it wasn’t said if they would be fired.
Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is overseeing an overhaul of the Civil Service ordered by the country’s international lenders, ordered all ministries and state bodies to check for forged degrees and other fraudulent documents used by people to get hired.
The circular calls on all state services to provide the ministry’s internal audit service with details about their employees’ professional qualifications within the next four weeks. The inspection concerns all civil servants but will start with permanent staff at ministries and state bodies.
Mitsotakis said the initiative was an attempt to “fix chronic injustices” and boost the credibility of Greece’s public administration. “We are putting an end to a state of impunity while implementing procedures and structures that will prevent these unacceptable phenomena from happening again in the future,” he said.
So far, however, he has ordered the firing of school nurses, janitors, cleaning ladies, municipal police, teachers and others on the low end of the pay scale while exempting Parliament workers and higher-paid managers and consultants. He had promised a review before firings but never did.
According to the circular, state bodies should immediately dismiss employees found to have been hired on the basis of forged certificates, although that approach was tried before and failed after appeals hung up the cases for years.
Officials who hired workers on the basis of fake qualifications could also face discipline although it has been common practice in Greece for politicians to order officials to hire friends, family and others even if they weren’t qualified.
Mitsotakis said that workers who try to retire and get a pension before the check is completed will also face disciplinary action but didn’t say if politicians who directed hirings of unqualified people would too.
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