The President of SYRIZA – Progressive Alliance, Alexis Tsipras, had a meeting with the Initiative for public water, which consists of EYDAP and EYATH unions and the network of environmental organizations, this morning in the Parliament, in the wake of the water bill that was passed yesterday by the governing majority of SW.

By way of introduction, on the occasion of yesterday’s interview with Mr. Mitsotakis, Alexis Tsipras emphasized that his strategy in everything is “the strategy of cover-up and hypocrisy, against the truth and justice that is today a demand of Greek society”.

He underlined that “yesterday, instead of giving honest explanations to the Greek people, he tried once again to cover up his responsibilities” and added that “”a little while earlier he passed a bill to start the water privatization process, where he covered up his intentions and he hypocritically said that this is not a privatization operation, while in his previous statements he had said that his goal is the privatization of water as well.”

According to Mr. Tsipras, the first step for the privatization of water is the establishment of a Regulatory Authority that includes the bill that was passed yesterday, while he characterized as hypocritical what the ND MPs said yesterday that this is an obligation from the Recovery Fund, as the same the government placed this obligation in the prerequisites.

“In a dramatic way, we find that this logic of creating profit through the privatization of all services is dangerous for the security of the citizens” underlined the President of SYRIZA – PS to recall the example of the OSE which, from 1,200 permanent workers in 2019, today has 700, as he said the government’s goal is to privatize services in the network. “The individual wants less costs, so fewer workers and lower wages. The citizen pays more and has less security,” emphasized Mr. Tsipras and said that the same happens with water. “Water will be more expensive, bills higher, but safety standards low.”

Finally, Mr. Tsipras pledged that the next progressive government of the country will cancel these intentions to privatize water by canceling the Regulatory Authority provided for in the bill that was passed yesterday, but above all it will cancel any thought of privatizing water.

For their part, the members of the Initiative stressed that water is a public good and must be safe and cheap for all citizens, for the whole society.

“For the last four years, the government of ND has been trying by all means to commercialize water, which started with the sale of 40% of the country’s water reserves to private individuals,” emphasized the representative of the workers on the EYDAP Board of Directors, Mr. Giorgos Alexandrakis. He also referred to the creation of the Initiative by 70 environmental organizations, from EYDAP, EYATH and DEYA unions and succeeded with its actions and actions in important decisions of the CoE which define that water is a public good. “The government is constantly trying to circumvent these decisions,” he underlined. Finally, he noted that in 2019 the SYRIZA government handed over EYDAP with a 420 million euro reserve and since then the ND government has only been making loss-making solutions.