“SYRIZA-PS calls on the government to immediately withdraw its decision to close the 41 ELTA branches“, stresses the president of the party’s Executive Committee, Sokratis Famellos.

“So far the abandonment of the region, so far the deforestation of services from the State and their gift to private individuals and interests“, he adds.

In his statement he states in particular that “hundreds of thousands of citizens are experiencing from today the results of the extreme neoliberal policy of the ND government, after the sudden and unjustified decision to close 41 branches of ELTA in the whole country”.

He accuses the government that “under the pretext of the alleged restructuring of ELTA, it is proceeding with the violent shrinking of the Agency’s network of stores in mountainous, island and hard-to-reach areas” and that “thus inflicting a serious blow on the Greek region and leading to its desolation».

This is because, as he states, “until today, these stores served the needs of communication, financial transactions (payment of pensions, payment of utility bills, tax, etc.), covering also the closing of bank branches, and even pharmaceutical care. Services for which, especially in certain areas and specific groups of citizens, there is no alternative plan for providing them».

Mr. Famellos accuses the prime minister of “he insists on his anti-social policy, in this particular case with the systematic discrediting and complete dissolution of the ELTA, because he is not interested in the needs of the citizens, especially the countryside and the region in general” and that “has as its sole objective the complete privatization of ELTA by selling them to a strategic “private” investor».

He notes that the state financial injection of 280 million euros given to ELTA in 2020 was not able to prevent the closure of stores and that “after all, the priority was not the citizens and local development but the “support” of her chosen one and former member of the ND, Andreas Patsis, through scandalous direct assignments of 1 million euros, or the creation of a party army through the recruitment of golden boys, in derogation of the provisions of Law 4758, which she voted for».