Athens, Thessaloniki mayors slam municipal staff census
Local authorities in Athens and Thessaloniki, the country’s two largest municipalities, on Wednesday reacted to a staff census issued by the Interior Ministry that will form the basis for an upcoming mobility scheme for local government workers.
Speaking at an emergency council meeting on Wednesday, Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis slammed the findings of the report, which puts the number of redundant employees at 667. “We took over the municipality with 12,500 workers, we are now down to 7,300, and we are barely holding on to another 1,100 thanks to judicial rulings,” he said.
A similar reaction came from his Thessaloniki counterpart Yiannis Boutaris. “We do not have any surplus [staff]. In fact we have a shortage,” Boutaris said after the ministry study found the northern Greece municipality to have an excess 321 staff.
About 3,500 municipal workers across the country are to be inducted into a mobility scheme.
