WHEN Giorgos Pamborides was appointed health minister last July, one metrios drinker that knew him was greatly puzzled by Prez Nik’s choice as the guy was known to be opinionated, confrontational and rather blunt; he did not suffer fools gladly as they say.
All commendable qualities for a minister, but in consensus-crazed Kyproulla, in which governments give a say to every fool and union loser as a matter of policy, a minister that does not shy away from a fight, like Pamborides, was bound to be trouble.
How could Nik, who has lost all appetite for a scrap since his election and wants to please everyone, have chosen such a guy to manage the most problematic ministry and introduce the national health scheme which was being opposed by unions doggedly fighting to preserve the privileges of their members?
What made his choice even more puzzling was that the minister Pamborides replaced, Philippos Patsalis, had stepped down because the Prez sided with unions in one of the disputes regarding the NHS. And Patsalis was no confrontational type, regularly backing down when the unions made a fuss.
In his first months at the ministry, Pamborides kept a low profile, but since the turn of the year and after announcing his plan for the introduction of a mini-NHS – sparking a hostile reaction from everyone involved in health – he has been displaying all the traits the metrios drinker spoke about, picking fights with anyone that crosses him.
The first-ever minister with a shaved head has balls, but how long he will dodge the attempts by government doctors to castrate him remains to be seen.
THE PREVIOUS week government doctors announced they would set a quota on the number of patients they would see each day (20 to 30) as a reaction to the introduction of mini-NHS. Doctors from the private sector were also moaning because they would not be part of the mini.
Pamborides publicly wondered why the doctors never protested over delays in introducing the NHS, but as soon as a decision for action was taken by the government they were up in arms trying to block it. He also brought up the issue of government doctors clocking in, which they were refusing to do, even though it was obligatory throughout the state sector.
Was this because they were cheating on the state and skiving off work or because they felt such a work practice was beneath the dignity of exalted professionals like doctors? Pamborides did not ask this, we did.
On Sunday, in an interview with Kathimerini, he then questioned the opposition of private doctors to the NHS, suggesting that this was because many were making a lot of money which they did not declare. Under the NHS all income would have to be declared.
It was a bit rich for a member of the legal profession, whose members are not renowned for refusing under the table payments or filing accurate tax returns, accusing doctors of not declaring their income, but who cares.
ON THURSDAY he then had to deal with public criticism of the head of the ministry’s medical services Dr Petros Matsas, who said state hospitals were understaffed because of an exodus of doctors leaving to join the private health sector. Vacated positions were not filled because of budgetary restrictions, which meant waiting lists became longer, while a third of staff were on contracts which meant they were demotivated.
Matsas spoke like a union rep rather than as a senior ministry official, but he is a government doctor and felt obliged to point out that his colleagues were leaving the hospitals because the pay was not good enough. Only in Kyproulla’s dictatorship of the proletariat, do union reps rise to top positions, in the state, the banks and SGOs. In a normal country these guys would be penalised for their union activity and have been ineligible for any promotion.
Pamborides was obviously livid, giving data that showed state healthcare staffing levels had not been cut since 2012, before laying it on Matsas, speculating that his claims were “related to his anxiousness to stay in his position after his 65th year”. He was due to retire next year, the minister helpfully suggested on a radio show.
THE minister then had a go at employees who abused sick leave. The problem was not that the government was not filling positions vacated because of pregnancies or long-term sick leave, as a union man, Matsas claimed. It was because there were about 140 cases of long-term sick leave at hospitals that were signed off by doctors, no matter how unreasonable many were.
You just have to admire the guy taking on the entire health sector – self-interested doctors disobeying the law and refusing to clock in, hospital staff abusing sick leave, private doctors cheating the tax authorities and the head of the medical services looking after number one.
The Prez intends to have a broad meeting with all reps of the health sector this week, which cannot be a good sign, as he will most probably suck up to everyone his minister has so commendably pissed off in the last few weeks. His mantra, after all, is “we aim to please everyone.”
ABUSE of sick leave is endemic in the parasitic sector and on Wednesday the Council of Ministers approved the creation of a new medical committee for examining the applications for state school teachers who are notorious for taking months off work for minor ailments.
Medical examinations would be more thorough while an education ministry official will also sit on the committee to brief it about possible reasons for a teacher’s illness. Many teachers that are given a transfer they do not like simply go sick for months, but from now on the ministry rep will inform the committee if the teacher is simply suffering from an unfavourable transfer virus.
Perhaps it will also do something about the female teachers who, as soon as they are knocked up, apply and are granted sick leave for the entire duration of their pregnancy. Combined with the four months they are entitled to by law, this gives them at least a year off work.
APART from a good fairy-tale, we also love a good mystery yarn in Kyproulla, which is why everyone got so excited about leaking of the Cyprob document which Prez Nik handed to party leaders at last Monday’s National Council bash, after making them promise they would not make it public.
At least one of the participants betrayed Nik as a few hours after the meeting, the document was posted on the Sigmalive and Phil websites. It was just as well, because the actual leaking was a much sexier story – mystery, betrayal, double-crossing – than the content of the document, the only value of which was as an insomnia cure.
It was so bland and boring, not even the opposition parties found anything in it to get angry about and use as an excuse to attack Nik. I suspect it was drafted by his Mr Nice-Guy spokesman Nicos Christodoulides, whose unrivalled talent for blandness in the spoken word could easily have been transferred to written form.
What made the leak such a compelling mystery was the large number of suspects (more than in an Agatha Christie novel) and all with a motive. The only weakness of the yarn was that no crime had been committed and all the fuss made was about nothing, but it still beat focusing on the actual document.
THINGS are definitely not going well for our latest saviour, Dr Eleni Theocharous, who eight days ago as studio guest was given a real roasting by the news presenter of Sigma TV. It was peculiar to see such hostility towards the saintly Eleni on a friendly station.
Had Zeus Hadjicostis, the supreme ruler of the media group controlling Sigma, not told the presenter that he was a big fan of the MEP and fully supported her efforts to save the country from Turkification and become its president? I will check tonight if the feisty presenter, who does the weekend shows, still has her job.
THE BOAST about setting herself alight for Enosis in Syntagma Square, was just a case of “poetic licence”, she said before blaming the disparaging comments this elicited on social media on DISY, the party she walked out of last month because it was not patriotic enough.
“Since I left DISY, there has been a war against me, a war that has no logic,” she said, playing the victim card in the hope it would win a bit of sympathy.
Of course DISY’s war has logic. Dr Eleni left her party accusing it of being unpatriotic, ready to sell out to the Turks and of covering up corruption among other things. If she really expected the party to praise her heroic action and disparaging words, she must have defected to cloud cuckoo land.
THE DAY after Nicosia’s historic summit of Bibi, Nik and Alexis, our prez received a telephone call from US Vice President Joe Biden, which, according to deputy government spokesman Victoras lasted half an hour.
Victoras told Tass news agency that Joe had briefed Nik about his visit to Ankara and the talks he had with the Turkish government about the Cyprob. But this was not the information that was leaked to us from our source in the palace, the identity of whom we cannot reveal because our journalistic ethics do not permit it.
Biden apparently was concerned about the threesome’s declaration to “further explore projects such as the EastMed pipeline”, which would supposedly take our gas to Greece. He had reportedly taken the declaration about the EastMed pipeline seriously, just like our media, and felt Nik was going back on their understanding (reiterated at their Davos meeting) that Kyproulla’s and Israel’s gas would be sold to Turkey.
We have no other info, but can only guess that Nik assured Joe that mention of the EastMed pipeline was not meant to be taken seriously and its inclusion was only intended for domestic consumption.
THE HIDEOUS propagandist-in-chief of AKEL Giorgos Loucaides accused Nik of “beautifying the state of the economy not realising that this approach provokes the feelings of the citizens and especially those that suffer the most.
“Without being aware that the subservience, humiliation and impoverishment of our people might be a necessary pre-requisite for government policies to appeal to the troika and rating agencies, this in no way makes them beneficial for our people.”
These Akelites really do have a nerve. I will just remind Loucaides that in 2011, with Kyproulla excluded from the markets, Comrade Tof arranged to borrow €2.5 billion from Mother Russia, so he would not have to make spending cuts. According to the agreement he made, we should have paid the full amount back this year. It was the Troika which arranged the restructuring of the loan, after we signed the memorandum.
And our humiliation and impoverishment would have been 10 times worse if we had to find €2.5 billion to pay off Mother Russia this year, when Vladimir Putin is being obliged to sell off state industries to raise one trillion roubles for his struggling economy’s needs.
THE VIRGIN birth is back on the cards I hear. Some comment made by Akinci’s spokesman Baris Burcu about the new state had all our freedom fighters pulling at their hair and beating their breasts about the latest Turkish provocation that would lead to the demise of the Cyprus Republic and the virgin birth of the new state.
The provocation was reported by anti-settlement mouthpiece Simerini which reported on its front page on Friday: “The statement by the spokesman of the occupation regime Baris Burcu, who made it clear that the Turkish Cypriot side does not accept the evolution of the Cyprus Republic was a ‘bomb’ at the foundations of the negotiations.”
You would expect Simerini to celebrate such a ‘bomb’ at the foundations of the talks. After all, ever since the Nik-Mustafa meetings began, its reporters and comment-writers have been trying to blow up the talks on a daily basis with their incendiary articles.
