ERT needs to be reined in
A lot has been said and written over the past few weeks about the debts of state-owned companies such as the Hellenic Railways Organization and a plethora of smaller companies having reached such proportions that they run the risk of derailing the government’s efforts at revenue collection and obliterating all the heavy sacrifices the people have had to endure under the present austerity measures. Along with these tales of mismanagement and waste, we must also be concerned about the situation at the ERT state broadcasting company, which also displays all the symptoms of poor management, with millions of euros in state funding and subsidies having gone by the wayside. There will soon come a day when the populace refuses to tolerate being charged a steep levy for the state radio and television company on their electricity bills. They will no longer tolerate being forced to finance a public company that has thousands more employees than it needs, especially when that company claims that it needs to take on extra staff on contract for various shows because it can’t make do with the people it already has.