Sombre Meeting

Last night there was an important council meeting.  The main item on the agenda was the enforced redundancies of more than 30 workers from the council. The Meeting was attended by several of the workers in question. The mayor outlined the situation as it stands now. Mr Koukianakis, for the opposition party said that he thought this meeting was too little too late and should have taken place when the jobs were first under threat. Questions were asked as to whether more could have been done to safeguard the jobs and if the court case had been approached properly. This idea was refuted by Mr Nikoloudis. The more important question was if anything could  be done now to help the workers who are unemployed. 

Mr Sgourakis suggested that some of them ( electricians, plumbers etc) could register as self employed and could be used on that basis. The Mayor told us of discussions with "Dedisa" who may be able to take some of the cleansing department and maintenance workers on. Mr Haritakis pointed out that there had been 7 broken water pipes in the area yesterday and he had no one to send to fix them. 

Mr Stavros Stavroulaks ( Village representative for Kefalas) Suggested that a company could be set up by the workers so they could tender for the works. This was agreed as a good idea and would be looked into whilst also trying to find some short term solutions.

The more militant members agreed with Ms Terizakis who suggested that the council should protest about these enforced cuts by all the councillors resigning on mass. It was asked if this would achieve anything for the workers. A spokesman for the workers pointed out that day to day life is what they are currently interested in. 

To put this into some kind of perspective it means that 4 family wage earners in my own small village are now out of work. These are all people with young families. they have worked for the council from between3 and 10 years.