The pre-election period did not help to amend the Organization

2023-06-09 20:36:54

Editorial Room News

The opposition factions ran afoul of the municipal authority’s attempt to amend the Internal Service Organization, with the time it chose to bring the issue to the municipal council being one of the factors that left no room for an overvote.

Despite the fact that the supplementary proposal submitted showed that there is provision for an increase in organizational positions and not a decrease, as the OTA Employees’ Association had denounced, the opposition factions did not give the “green light” for amending the Organization, with the Thomas Bega and Tatiana Kalogianni to claim for themselves the responsibility of modification if they take over the reins of the Municipality.
In his initial presentation, the mayor of Ioannina Dimitris Papageorgiou talked about the creation of 346 positions, with the result that they will reach from 772 today to 1,118, in the central Municipality alone. Mr. Papageorgiou argued for the need to immediately amend the Organization, noting that without it employees cannot even be claimed through mobility, as there will be no positions to be filled. “The services are suffering from a lack of staff. The Agency is coming to cure this thing. It is an act for the survival of the Municipality”, he said, among other things.
Thomas Begas, the head of the faction “Unity of Citizens of New Ioannina” characterized the proposal as a “monument of sloppiness”, focusing on the time it was submitted to the municipal council and asking why this was not done within four years and is being done four months before the elections. “It is unethical to try to bind the next municipality. At the end of your term, you attempt a communication storm, which proves your panic,” he noted.
The leader of the “Ioannina_2023” faction, Tatiana Kalogianni, spoke about an Organization that does not deal with problems and malfunctions, who proceeded to file specific structural amendments, including the creation of two General Directorates and the creation of the Directorate of Greenery and Urban Fauna. “The proposal to amend the Internal Service Organization of the Municipality is another attempt by the municipal authority to cause political noise with a revision of the organization chart of the administrative organization of the municipality, of dubious expediency, and indeed 20 days before the expiration of the deadline for changing the Internal Service .
It will cause relative disruption with no visible benefits and as with the majority of issues handled by the municipal government in the current period, the next municipal government will be called upon to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, after receiving many different hot potatoes,” he concluded.
At the political level, the leaders of the factions “Ioannina. Citizens for the Upheaval” Lazaros Natsis, “Popular Mobilization” Oli Tsoumanis and “Leftist Intervention in Ioannina” Christos Patsouras, who focused on the fact that no recruitment is being done and that more and more services are being assigned to private individuals.
Aris Bartzokas spoke for a “show of strength by the united opposition”, as was done at the beginning of the term of office of the municipal authority, with his reports provoking the reaction of municipal councilors of the opposition. “Today was a great opportunity. We have the no for the no”, he said, with Thomas Yotitsa replying that “a thousand times a united opposition than a disbanded coalition”.
The president of the OTA Employees Association, Tina Zeka, “saw” a folding of the municipal authority, speaking of a “discovery” of 206 jobs, if the union had not raised a general alarm. However, he again said that the folding is not enough, noting that the city has grown, the Municipality has additional responsibilities, with the Organization being adapted to the existing staff and not to the real needs.
Closing the debate and having clearly seen that the Organization will not pass, D. Papageorgiou admitted that the amendment is coming with a delay to vote, however this was dictated by objective reasons, such as the pandemic and the illness and death of Moses Elisaf. On the other hand, however, he criticized the attitude of the opposition, which does not allow the municipal authority to manage the Municipality, which also happened in other key issues, such as waste management, leds and the development organization.