I HAVE recently written that the situation at semi-governmental organisations, with regard to salaries, pensions and other benefits, is the most outrageously provocative encountered in the broader public sector.
These organisations have very accurately been described as ultra-costly sheikdoms at which stealing from the taxpayer was rampant, even though they are all bankrupt. The revelations made at the House Watchdog Committee last Tuesday, during the investigation of the financial records of the CyBC, confirmed the large scale of the problem.
We do not need to point out that the responsibility for the creation of these sheikdoms belongs fully to successive governments and the political parties, which, guided by unrelenting populism, satisfied even the most scandalous union demands, because this was the best way to help out ‘their own’.
The situation at the CyBC is particularly contemptible, as it depends on a huge subsidy from the state. Some of the figures discussed were very revealing about the shabbiness prevailing at what has been described as a ‘disreputable’ organisation.
Every year, the state spends between 35 and 45 million euros on the CyBC. And it would not be so bad if it was producing high quality shows, but some of its shows are so idiotic, they give the impression that they are made for the sole purpose of providing employment to layabouts, most of whom cannot even speak Greek properly if we consider how they abuse the language.
It gets worse. The deficit in the corporation’s pension fund is a staggering €63 million. Not surprising given the scandalously exorbitant average cost of its 135 permanent members of staff which currently stands at €79,012 each. It is an astonishing amount, way higher than the average cost of senior managers – not employees – in the private sector.
At Tuesday’s meeting the scandal of overtime pay was also discussed. In 2010, 12 employees of the CyBC each received an extra €20,000 in overtime pay alone, an amount that is considered a reasonable annual salary in the private sector. And the bill for this thieving of the state by the semi-governmental nomenclature is paid by the hapless wage-earners of the private sector.
And when you consider the poor quality of the shows being broadcast by these over-paid workers you become even more furious. Some are of such a depressingly low quality, you wonder why we have to pay for them as well.
The after-midnight show on the CyBC’s Trito radio, which lasts until the morning is a testament to low-brow broadcasting. It features a presenter, who is probably on double-pay, because of the unsociable hours of work, talking nonsense with a group of 50 to 60 regulars.
It would be very interesting to know how much, we mugs are paying for the presenter and producer of this show serving 50, low-intelligence insomniacs?
I repeat that the responsibility for the scandalous situation at semi-governmental organisations belongs exclusively to the politicians. These organisations are their creation.
It is therefore time for the few deputies who have been calling for radical reform of the broader public sector, like Nicholas Papadopoulos and Averof Neophytou, to focus their attention on the CyBC and other semi-governmental sheikdoms because the thieving of the state at these places is worse than what is happening in the civil service.
