Paros: 51,350 euros in benefits for doctors and staff

The Paros Municipal Committee approved cash benefits totalling 51,350 euros, according to reports from Koini Gnomi, Cyclades24 and Naxos Times. The decision concerns two categories of beneficiaries serving on the island. The first includes seven substitute and rural-service doctors who staff the Paros Health Centre. The second includes 74 public employees assigned to services on the island. This is a benefit paid by the municipality rather than the state budget, under the ability of island local government bodies to provide financial support to staff in essential services in order to fill vacant posts.

This mechanism has become established in recent years in several island municipalities of the Cyclades and functions as an offset to the high cost of living. The main obstacle to staffing the islands is not, as a rule, the salary itself, but housing: during the summer months, rents on popular islands rise to levels that make it unaffordable for an employee or a young doctor to relocate from mainland Greece. The result is vacant posts in hospital facilities, schools and administrative services, precisely during the period when the island’s population multiplies and demand for services peaks. Such decisions are made by the Municipal Committee, the body that has replaced the former Economic Committee and decides on municipal budget expenditure.

For Paros the issue has a specific dimension. The island’s Health Centre is called upon to serve both permanent residents and a much larger number of visitors during the tourist season, while also acting as a reference point for Antiparos. Rural-service and substitute doctors often cover on-call duties and cases that, in their absence, would require air transfer to Syros or Athens, with all the time and cost that entails. The support for the 74 public employees concerns, correspondingly, the operation of services that residents and businesses use daily. Paros also has schools, a port authority and municipal services, largely staffed by employees who are not originally from the island.

The Municipal Committee’s decision is the first stage of the process; the administrative steps for settling and paying out the amounts to beneficiaries follow. The reports do not disclose the individual amount of the benefit per beneficiary, nor the time period it covers. It has also not been announced whether the arrangement will be repeated next year. TodayGrid will return to the story once the detailed decision with amounts per beneficiary category is made public. More coverage from the island is published on the Paros page, and news from across the Cyclades on the Cyclades page.