Ministerial inquiry into employment status of father from Amish-like family
Interior Minister Niki Kerameos requested on Monday an investigation into the employment status of the 45-year-old father from the “early Christian” family living in a makeshift dwelling in the mountainous region of Corinthia, Peloponnese.
“I have requested the relevant authorities to conduct an inquiry to determine the employment status, and under what capacity, the 45-year-old father of the ‘early Christian’ family in Corinthia is serving in the Eretria Municipality on the island of Evia,” stated the minister in Parliament on Monday.
“The government’s priority is to strengthen our valuable human resources, while ensuring strict supervision of the human resources sector,” Kerameos added.
According to the mayor of Eretria-Amarynthos, Nikolaos Gournis, the 45-year-old has been working remotely in recent years. Since the 2020 pandemic, “he has been providing remote services, as instructed by the previous administration,” Gournis said. “He has been completing the tasks assigned to him,” he added.
The 45-year-old father was arrested on Sunday for failure to comply with the compulsory education requirement for his three minor children.
Meanwhile, police, assisted by prosecutorial authorities, are searching for the suspect’s wife and mother of the children, as well as the remaining family members not found during Sunday’s extensive search.
The seven-member family reportedly resided without access to electricity or running water in a shack with a 30-meter tunnel running beneath it, near the village of Manna in the Corinthia region.
The parents have stated they have chosen to live away from the comforts of modern civilization, in burrows and caves akin to early communities. They self-characterize as an “early Christian community, similar to America’s Amish.”
The police investigation follows an incident between the family and hunters last weekend.
Police had conducted an operation, seizing makeshift firearms, cartridges, bows, arrows, knives, and axes, and apprehending the parents and the two older children.
