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The Ministry of the Interior announced that nearly five thousand new jobs in the public administration are opened and present public transport employees will occupy 1440 of them. Meanwhile, the application term for managerial positions in the public transport companies expired. The government is looking for new people to be in charge of the management and operation of the Athens trolleys, city buses and underground hoping that they will perform their duties with more conscientiousness than their predecessors.

According to a publication in Vima, the government plans to keep its promise and will not lay off any state official or a public company employee. Instead, it will shift the pawns on the board, placing old public sector employees to new jobs.

The reorganization of the public enterprises is a major priority of the government after the supervisory Troika reminded it that any company that is not able to earn its costs is better to be reformed, privatized or closed down. Transport companies are exhausted by their cost burden which makes the reduction of staff and salaries mandatory.

One of the obstacles to the implementation of the proposed reform is the significant difference between the planned and collected revenue to date. The company that manages the Athenian city buses registered a 70% decrease in the revenue in January 2011. The main reasons for the dramatic drop in the revenue are the permanent and long strikes, but also the “I do not pay” movement, which has become much stronger recently. The drop in the city train revenue is 57% and 32% of the metropolitan tram line.

After all the reforms and salaries and allowances cuts, the deficit of the company that manages the electric train in the capital decreased from 104 million euros in 2009 to 103 million euros. The Athens tram losses, however, have increased over the same period and reached almost 43 million euros from 37 million.

In this line of thoughts, public transport managers comment that if the government does not hasten to place some of the employees in other positions in public administration, transport companies will find themselves at a financial impasse. The situation gets even more pessimistic if individual business contracts in urban transport do not replace the collective ones following the example of the state railways.

While those employed in the public service are worried what will be their new job and what additional benefits will be partially cut, the union of private-sector employees (GSEE) told Mega TV that the unemployed will reach 1 3 million people by the end of 2011.