Greece’s creditors have firmly asked the government to lay off 100,000 civil servants by 2015, with 50,000 to be shifted to «εφεδρεία» (a special labor reserve at reduced pay ) as off tomorrow or Greece will be left on its own and aid talks stop here.
According To Vima newspaper, troika inspectors have noted down 15 austerity measures the Greek Minister of Finance Evangelos Venizelos must take “here and now.” The abolition of thousands of jobs in 10 government agencies-and the closure or merger of another 65 state organizations by Christmas are the two toughest measures that will make Mr Venizelo’s life rather difficult in the days to come. Officials also asked for immediate pension cuts to farmers, seamen and Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA (OTE) employees as well as further cutbacks in public sector wages effective from next month.
Mr Venizelos had already had a rather tough weekend at the meeting of European finance ministers in Wroclaw, Poland. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble seemed rather annoyed for Greece not being able to reach the fiscal targets agreed earlier this year and revealed a harder line when saying in a German newspaper interview that Greeks will by no means receive the next tranche unless they stick to the deficit reductions agreed.
In fact,it is Greece’s inability to keep its promises that led Troika to up the target for public sector layoffs to 100,000—and demand that all civil servants hired in the past 20 months get fired immediately!
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