Greece’s Labour Ministry has discovered nearly 200,000 cases of pension or welfare fraud by its citizens, claimed a report by Reuters on Wednesday, with the government expected to save up to 800 million euros ($1 billion) a year from ending these payments.
Greece’s cash-strapped government may consider renting out police officers and equipment – including patrol boats and helicopters – to private citizens and businesses, said a report by AFP on Monday, as the country continues to deal with a spiralling public debt that has cost severe budget cuts for national public services.
Greece will accelerate the development of a 20 billion euro ($27 billion) solar-energy project named “Project Helios”, after the ancient sun god, said prime minister Lucas Papademos on Tuesday, after the government made investments in renewable energy a “national priority” in order to aid the nation’s economic recovery.
“In the last few years, talk has centred on Greece’s fiscal discipline,” said Papademos, while at a renewable energy and infrastructure development summit in Athens.
Greece’s track and field federation may be forced to suspend all their existing programmes and activities, said Federation head Vassilis Sevastis to the Associated Press on Tuesday, after cuts in state funding had left several coaches and suppliers unpaid for months.
The once-thriving Greek port city of Perama – just 14.48km away from the capital of Athens – could be on the verge of a “humanitarian crisis”, said global humanitarian aid organisation Doctors of the World on Friday, as thousands of residents struggle to afford basic human necessities such as food and healthcare.
The German Finance Ministry has offered to send an envoy of its tax collectors to Greece in order to educate the Greeks on more efficient tax collection methods as well as to modernise the Greek tax administrative system.
Greece’s coalition government has agreed to a reform program demanded by their creditors to cut 15,000 public-sector jobs by the end of the year, said a government official on Monday, as international pressure continues to mount on the country to implement austerity measures.
The announcement marked the first significant shift in Greek policy, with state jobs having previously been protected by the government during the country’s acute financial crisis, which started nearly two years ago.
Greece was in collective uproar over the weekend after a leaked German report, obtained by the Financial Times last Friday, proposed that the Greek government cede control over all tax and spending decisions to a eurozone “budget commissioner” in exchange for a new 130 billion euros bail-out.
Greece’s Finance Ministry released a list of more than 4,000 tax evaders to the public on Sunday, as part of a name-and-shame policy that the ministry hopes will encourage more people to pay their taxes.
Among those who were publicly humiliated included numerous celebrities and high-profile businessmen who cumulatively, as the ministry claims, owe the state more than $19 billion in unpaid taxes.
Greece’s spiralling debt crisis and subsequent austerity measures have led to a drug shortage among pharmacies and clinics in the country, where even common drugs, such as aspirin, have been increasingly harder to find.
