Gov’t plans to recruit 20,000 to civil service

Alongside the aim of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to overhaul the Constitution are plans to hire 20,000 civil servants, Kathimerini understands.

Of the 20,000 public servants the government is planning to hire over the next year, about half are to be recruited via the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection (ASEP). The remainder are to be appointed directly to understaffed state education and health services in line with Tsipras’s pledges to boost the Greek welfare state, which has been struck by austerity.

Government officials do not believe that the recruitments will run into objections from representatives of Greece’s international creditors, Kathimerini understands.

One government source said the aim of the recruitments is to bring “a new spirit” into the public sector, which he described as “a minefield.”

The same source denied that such a move would render the civil service beholden to leftist SYRIZA, noting that ASEP would guarantee the legitimacy of recruitments that it oversees.