With 31 votes for, 1 against and 3 abstentions, RIK officially has a crippled budget of 37.5 million as of yesterday
They have complaints about the fact that they are not hosted on their broadcasts, they are asking for a new building (even though it is not even provided for in the budget), they are asking for modern public broadcasting, sports, they want information programs, a role for RIK2, but they voted for the budget because it reached the para five in Parliament and RIK is in danger of running out of money. With 31 votes in favor, 1 against and 3 abstentions, the RIK officially has a crippled budget of 37.5 million as of yesterday and it is now assumed that it will go with a supplementary budget in mid-June, since the money given to them is only enough to have employees of a broadcaster that will have minimal fiction productions. Of the two amendments tabled, only DISY's was voted, according to which every contract signed by the semi-state organization should be approved by the Parliament.
Three appearances, should I leave it?
Yesterday's debate in the plenary session of the Parliament on the passing of the RIK budget had no discussions and arguments about the money given to the institution and why the Ministry of Finance cut them money. But he had many complaints from the MPs about the times they are hosted on current affairs shows. From Zacharias Koulias to Andreas Themistokleous and from Christos Orphanidis to Andreas Pasiourtidis, everyone was discussing how many times they should be hosted on the shows and why they weren't hosted or justified why they were hosted! Pavlos Mylonas made a firefighting intervention as a journalist asking his fellow MPs to let the journalists do their work, however at the same time he did not fail to throw his arrows at the “Morning route”, in which he was not hosted, as he said, not even once . Oxymoron or not, anyway, RIK seems to continue to be a target of the MPs, since at the same time that the MPs ask for RIK without interference, they simultaneously intervene and ask the journalists, the board of directors and the management, to be hosted on its broadcasts. It is worth noting that the Speaker of the Parliament Annita Dimitriou, closing the issue of the appearances, stated that the appearances are highlighted, however it is not the position of the Parliament to interfere in the operation of the RIK.
The Ministry pays. Finance
In the meantime, the issue raised in recent months, which was raised by the unions about the possibility that the employees of the institution were not paid on time, the Ministry of Finance intervened. As Mr. Makis Keravnos mentioned, “we will not allow the employees to remain unpaid. The ministry will immediately act to get their salaries,” he said. It is recalled that the trade union organizations of RIK, EURIK OHO – SEK, SYTYRIK OHO – SEK and SIDIKEK PEO – RIK, had sent a letter on March 23, in which they characterized as impermissible for a public law organization the possibility of not paying the salaries for March. The problem did not arise only because the RIK budget was delayed in reaching the Parliament, but mainly from the court decision, according to which all the accounts of the institution were frozen, as a lever of pressure to immediately pay the amount won by the court by its employee Evdokia Loizou Foundation. After the intervention of the Ministry of Finance, it seems that the unions will no longer go ahead with the work stoppages that they had warned that they would start this Friday.
