The number of employees in the public sector has never been clear. Neither the government is aware of how many people it has working for it (it believes them to be around 800,000), how much they cost it, in which agencies and institutions they are employed and what duties they perform. Census of the public sector employees begins officially on July 12 and will end on July 23. The goal is for the administration to finally has a clear idea of the human resources available and to be able to control their payments because there are many cases where there is a double payment.
Census of the employees is the first step also for the application of the new unified pay scheme, which will start from 2011. The Government committed through a memorandum to create a simplified system of payment which will cover basic salary and allowances. The Ministry of Finance believes it will benefit from the census and the common electronic database for payment, as thus it will be able to establish various cases of irregular payment. Moreover, most of the allowances received by political officials in the ministries will be suspended.
In this direction will be created Unified Service for payments and from 1st November all public sector employees will receive their salaries from there. Employees will fill out electronically the document, in which they will report 74 columns of data for their education for their employment data, etc. in order to be registered. The verification will be comprised of crossing the data with tax authorities, and then employees will receive a personal code to receive their salary.
At the same time, it is expected that next month within the administrative reform which is held through the Kalikarti plan, 80,000 employees in municipal and regional administrations, municipalities and ministries to be moved to another job in a newly established office. They will be able to choose the office, which they prefer to be moved in before the mandatory shifts being carried out. Since July 1 with an issued circular will begin the operation for displacement of employees, which sends a clear message for major changes in the public sector. The goal is to cover the real needs of the administration but also to send a message to the "triple" and to foreign creditors that Greece is determined to manage to save costs.
To the positions which will not be filled by voluntary movements, will be allocated employees through compulsory transfer.The goal is for the new self governments which will assume their duties in early 2011 to be fully prepared in terms of employees. To avoid causing family problems, employees who are required to be moved will be in the city where they were until then.