K. Hatzidakis to SYRIZA: You do not support the real unemployed, but unfair practices

The Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Kostis Hatzidakis, attributed unprecedented fanaticism and sterile reaction to self-evident regulations without submitting counter-proposals to the opposition MPs, during the second day of discussion in the Social Affairs Committee of the Parliament of the OAED bill. “If someone has not read the bill and listened to you for the first time and looked at it immediately afterwards, they would think they were listening to people talking about another bill,” said Mr. Hatzidakis, who then deconstructed the opposition’s allegations about all the basic provisions:

“You told us that OAED is being downgraded and dissolved. How is this done? With the new digital tools? With the new ideas we have introduced, such as interest rate, rent allowance, paying cheap rent and then being able to buy the house (rent-to-own), a series of arrangements, which come to “To modernize the housing policy, to embrace the country’s workforce and especially the young people?

Referring to the criticism leveled at the regulations for vocational training, Mr. Hatzidakis underlined that the bill sets new, strict rules, so that training acquires real content. “Do you not see that we are raising the bar for both providers and trainees so that there is a serious process, similar to that concerning the country’s education system? Should not training be considered as something secondary, to which no importance is attached? After all, even though we used a lot of funds from the EU, we are one of the last in skills! Do you want to be indifferent? Do you propose to stop working with Google, Amazon, CISCO? All young people “run” today A program with Google that we did now for 4,000 positions in entrepreneurship went very well. 3,605 recently completed it successfully, with certification. You also criticize the participation of individuals in the training. SYRIZA is also protesting, even though in its day they were exactly the same individuals who did the training! You are criticizing the government “for the State and its role, when we – not you – put the public universities of the country to deal with the training and the trainees will now go through the gates of the universities”.

Regarding the so-called “punishment of the unemployed”, Mr. Hatzidakis wondered what kind of punishment the government imposes by introducing the work allowance for the first time, ie the possibility for an unemployed person to receive half the unemployment benefit until the time when If he is hired at 4 months, he will get it for others 8. Is this a punishment? OAED?

Or do you find it unreasonable to introduce the income criteria for those who are on the OAED list? And why for so long – and during SYRIZA – the heating allowance and the Social Tariff for electricity had income criteria? In this kind of social policies we can have income criteria, but in OAED especially not! Someone who has an income of 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 euros should also have the benefits of OAED! What do you suggest we do with all of them? The opposition – with the exception of KINAL – proposes that we caress all of them and let them continue all these practices, which refer to abuse, even if the legal framework allowed them to do all this legally!

And of course the same perception was expressed with the three offers of suitable positions that will be made from now on to the unemployed, as is done all over Europe. What does this regulation say? That if someone is on the register and receives unemployment benefit and is offered a position which is suitable based on the information he has declared to OAED (his degrees, his path, his last salary, his place of residence), if OAED gives him such a position, two positions, three positions and he rejects all three then, yes, he is deleted from the register for two years

What do you suggest; Should we continue to give the money of the Greek taxpayers to all these people who, while they have stated what job they want and while they are offered not one but three jobs based on what they themselves have stated, refuse the jobs for reasons we all imagine? That way you do not cover the real unemployed, but unfair practices! ”

Concluding his speech, Mr. Hatzidakis stressed: “This obsession of yours with the anti-social policy of the government, the catastrophic one, the rollers, the galleys and everything related to which you mentioned have nothing to do with reality and that is why you I thanked you for the attacks you are making, because while you are saying all this, unemployment has dropped from 17.2% under SYRIZA to 11.9% and at the same time the OAED programs, which we want to downgrade, have tripled the pace. “So continue this kind of attack. Your government is grateful that in this way you are exposing yourself and showing your social isolation.”