Galery

1

Municipality of Piraeus is in economic impasse and will be insolvent from August 13. This means that employees will remain without salaries, said the Mayor Panagiotis Fasulas at a press conference.

The news that the treasury of the municipality has no money has struck Mr. Fasulas like a thunderbolt. He received a document from the credit office notifying that “the grant for the municipality for that month is zero euros.” The reason for this is the decision of the credit office to withhold € 2.2 million, which is the total amount of state subsidy granted to one of the largest municipalities in the Attica region. It appeared that the municipality was due money for loans taken from previous authorities in the last 16 years, as claimed by Mr. Fasulas. The mayor stressed that he did not draw loans while he was governing Piraeus and that he have even paid part of the debts already accumulated. The Minister of Finance is aware of the problem of the municipality and would have to find a solution.  

“We have managed to hold the municipality so far, but the truth is that it is impossible to operate a town hall of thousands of citizens recorded with no revenue from central government. I am worried that we will be forced to stop the wages (of 2000 employees) and payments, if the government does not find a solution,” said Mayor Fasulas at an emergency press conference yesterday.

Mr. Fasulas said he insists the Ministry of Finance to settle the matter and proposes to deduct a specific amount of the budget of the municipality each month or to pay the debt with a better interest rate, but not to deduct the whole amount at once.