Follow Greek Immigration and Life in Greece: According to foreign media reports, Greek civil servants have lost a privilege they enjoyed for over twenty years—civil servants using computers were entitled to six additional paid leave days each year.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece's Minister of Administrative Reform, stated that the decision to cut this benefit is "a small symbolic step" in the process of modernizing the underperforming government administration. He is determined to challenge the existing system of public institutions and implement significant reforms.
After receiving assistance from the Eurozone and the International Monetary Fund, Greece has begun to cut civil servant benefits to reduce government spending and reform the public service sector. The public service sector in Greece employs over 600,000 individuals, and most citizens believe it is wasteful and inefficient.
The latest reform measures include the cancellation of attendance bonuses and the elimination of the provision allowing unmarried daughters to receive their deceased father's pension.
On June 12, 1989, the Greek government decided to grant one day of leave every two months to all civil servants who sit in front of a computer for more than five hours a day.
"This system belongs to another era. We are in a crisis now, and we can no longer uphold those outdated privileges," Mitsotakis stated in a declaration from his department on September 13.
The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have required Greece to place 25,000 civil servants into a "mobility plan" by the end of this year, meaning they will either be transferred to other departments or dismissed. Half of these individuals must be included in the "mobility plan" by the end of September.