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Kudos to Labour Minister Zeta Emilianidou for seeing through and sticking to strict criteria for the low-income family benefit, known as the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI).
This was a scheme introduced to help alleviate the financial pain of truly low-earning households or those with no income or already receiving benefits due to serious disabilities.
Although the programme’s EUR 60 mln annual payout, which averages out to just under 200 euros per month, will not necessarily make them rich overnight, it will at least provide for a respectable amount to improve the quality of life of the beneficiaries, many of whom are far below the poverty line.
When news of the GMI first came out, the government did not employ proper marketing methods to defend its case. Instead, many above-average earners thought this was a bonus to supplement their 13th salary.
That is why on Monday it was revealed that more than half of those rejected had deposits of 25,000 euros up to 1 mln, while 60% of those turned down had assets or property worth over 200,000 euros. Of these, 94 even had properties worth more than 1 mln.
The audacity of the latter category to go through the trouble of sending in an application with the hope that they might get some of the pickings, cannot be described by normal logic.
Then again, what the ministry failed to mention was that the majority of those who applied and were rejected were in the public sector or above-average pension earners, formerly of the public or semi-government sectors.
Despite assurances given at the launch of the programme, this data must now be sent over to the Inland Revenue for verification and if anyone is found to have evaded taxation, simply because of an acquaintance or relative in the civil service, then they should be fined and those who aided them, censured.
What the Labour Minister should now work on, with an equal amount of zeal, is how to help the long-term unemployed who have been shunned from all subsidies and grants, simply because they are not university graduates and out of work.
Sacrificing middle-aged and highly experienced or skilled workers, in order to cater to the parents of these university leavers was the biggest mistake which we hope will be fixed very soon.
The knowledge of the young budding entrepreneurs should be tapped, by all means. But so should the vast experience and practical know-how of the unemployed, middle-aged workforce, struggling to make ends meet.
