Bloomberg published an article about Greece, according to which, despite the optimistic messages for the increase of tourism in Greece, unemployment, chiefly among young people, is at high levels.
“For Greece’s Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, the tangible recovery signs in the country are the tourists that head to Athens from the cruise ships and the airplanes. However, most of the citizens do not share this euphoria,” the article reports.
According to the testimony of a 28-year-old girl named Olympia, “many are those who return back to their parents’ house because of the crisis, so that their parents will take care of them.” She continued, “I am an only-child and have never left home. I support my parents, I help them pay the rent, I take care of them.”
The 28-year-old said that she works as a waitress for €500, after having abandoned her studies in tourism because her income was reduced to half within three years. She prefers working as a waitress in Greece, rather than migrating abroad, as a friend of hers did.
As Bloomberg reports, “Tourism is the industry that brings money to thousands of Greeks and is expected to help the Greek economy exit the crisis.”
The article continues, “Many young people are forced to migrate, and those who stay often abandon their studies to serve coffee in Plaka, earning €500 per month, which help them stay out of those unemployed, who are constantly increasing.”
The article concludes that 3,6 millions of Greeks that are still employed, are experiencing daily anxiety not to lose their job.
“I see no change in the huge size of the debt,” Bruce Stout, head of Murray International Trust in Edinburgh, who visited the Greek island of Crete this year, stated. “On the streets of Athens, one can see Greeks and others sleeping out of banks’ and stores’ doors,” he said.
“The airport’s buses that leave tourists in Syntagma square opposite the Parliament, are often blocked by beggars, who bend with hands outstretched at the edges of the pavements,” Stout explained.
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