{"id":1921,"date":"2026-04-22T09:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T06:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=1921"},"modified":"2026-04-22T09:13:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T06:13:00","slug":"skertzos-response-to-the-oppositions-fake-news-about-the-temporary-employees-what-the-data-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=1921","title":{"rendered":"Skertzos’ response to the opposition’s fake news about the temporary employees – What the data say"},"content":{"rendered":"

A response to the opposition’s attempt to distort data about the post-employment employees is given in a social media post by Akis Skertsos<\/b>“.<\/p>\n

“The selective use of data and statistics, unfortunately, obscures and misinforms instead of responsibly informing public opinion. And the truth is that the opposition has been caught many times “cooking” the data concerning the temporary associates\/consultants hired for a term by members of the government, MPs and local government<\/b>,” the Minister of State characteristically said in his post.<\/p>\n

And he explains: “What’s half a lie? <\/b><\/p>\n

That the number of temporary employees of the state – where state is implied to be the government and where temporary special advisers, special advisers and scientific assistants are implied – has increased by 673 (or 25%) from 2019 to date, from 2,716 in May 2019 to 3,389 in January 2026.<\/p>\n

What’s the (dumb) trickery and malpractice?<\/b><\/p>\n

The necessary additional information is not given here that three categories of government officials are entitled to have temporary employees under the law:<\/p>\n

-Members of the government (ministers, deputy ministers, general and special secretaries)<\/p>\n

-Members of parliament who are elected members of parliament<\/p>\n

-Mayors, deputy mayors and general secretaries of municipalities.”<\/p>\n

“Therefore, in order to have an accurate picture of the time course of temporary employees over time, we need to evaluate the number of them in each individual category by month and year<\/b>,” the minister stresses.<\/p>\n

He continues:<\/p>\n

“What is the objective truth given by the data of the human resources register of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Moldova? Interior;<\/b><\/p>\n

As of May 2019, the total number of temporary employees was 2,716 distributed as follows:<\/p>\n

-1052 of SYRIZA government members<\/p>\n

-1085 of OTAs<\/p>\n

-579 of MPs.<\/p>\n

In January 2026, the total number of temporary employees was 3,389 divided as follows:<\/p>\n

-1054 of the members of the ND government <\/p>\n

-1767 of the OTAs <\/p>\n

-568 of the MPs.<\/p>\n

Thus, the government’s temporary employees remain practically unchanged (+2). MPs’ secondees are down by 11. And OTAs’ post-employees have increased by 682.”<\/p>\n

\"fb-img-1776799837260.jpg\"<\/figure>\n

Explaining “why this increase in the post-employment status of the local authorities<\/b> happened,” the minister explained that “in 2019, the ND government responded positively to the reasonable request of Central Union of Municipalities of Greece and legislated the creation of the position of general secretary in municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants as well as the establishment of deputy mayor positions in small municipalities. These new positions of the OTAs have the right to hire temporary employees. These are decisions of vital importance for the proper functioning of small municipalities that lack permanent staff to provide basic services.”<\/p>\n

And the minister goes on to ask another question: “But is the operation of the municipalities supported by temporary employees?”<\/b><\/p>\n

“Since 2019, the municipalities have been approved by Lt. 13,000 recruitments of permanent employees in the local authorities have been approved by the Ministry of Interior. In any case, it is very important to support with all possible tools especially the small municipalities of the country along with their permanent staffing,” he stresses.<\/p>\n

As he writes further. Skeetsos, the government in 2019 legislated three things to improve the legality and transparency around the recruitment of post-employees:<\/p>\n

“It prohibited the hiring<\/b> of relatives<\/b> in the political offices of officials in order to make more merit-based choices.<\/p>\n

It introduced the obligation to publish\/post online the identity details<\/b> of political office associates for transparency.<\/p>\n

It introduced for the first time a horizontal uniform rule of maximum number of temporary employees<\/b> for all government ministries<\/b> replacing the hitherto anarchic multiple-tier regime that existed in each ministry.”<\/p>\n

“The truth therefore is this and this alone. Any other attempt to distort these facts is clearly fake news,” Akis Skertsos concludes.<\/p>\n

\n
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A response to the attempt to distort the opposition’s data on temporary employees is given in a post on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}