The president of the SYRIZA-PS Parliamentary Group, Sokratis Famellos, launched an attack on the government and the Minister of Health, Adonis Georgiadis, by intervening in the Plenary Session of the Parliament on the amendment to the entry of private doctors into the National Health Service.

Mr. Famellos accused the Minister of Health that the procedure by which he is attempting to bring the amendment for the entry of private doctors into the National Health Service violates the rules of good legislation. Explained: “You brought for the first time as a jurist a substantial and major legislative regulation. You took it back at that stage, but you didn’t bring it back as you should have, that is, you didn’t file it in a bill to be posted on open.gov. You did not then submit it to the committees of the Parliament for discussion, no bodies were invited to give their opinion to the Parliament and furthermore, there was no documentation and the opinion of the scientific service of the Parliament. So, in a clandestine political way, you again tried to bring this arrangement through the back door. You have no excuse for this and don’t try to make white black. These are recorded and real events».

He then referred to the content of the amendment, saying:You are attempting a complete privatization of the national health system. As a result, within a few months of your return to the Ministry of Health, there is no connection in the current NHS with what the citizen needs, because now you have imposed taxes everywhere. You are synonymous with swindling. Charges for radiodiagnostic tests, charges for microbiological tests, charges for vaccines, charges for surgeries, charges for a personal doctor. And furthermore, you associate the national health system with its complete weakening and with the loss of scientists, because scientists with your own policy are leaving Greece because they too have no perspective. Now you are attempting with various obscenities, and I say this so that it can be recorded in the minutes, to connect the voluntary and pioneering offer of Pavlos Polakis at that time, when he said that we must do everything to save him from the national health system, even a human life . We are proud of what we did, that in a period of bankruptcy – because you bankrupted the country – we managed to fix both the Health budgets and the staffing and operation of the hospitals.

Because you with so many resources available, all you’ve managed to do is put bribes everywhere. While there are now resources from the Recovery Fund and resources also due to the pandemic, you, the ones you applauded, the health workers, have still left them to be on contract, adjuncts, without really a stable employment relationship».

He then referred to the bill being debated in plenary: “Reform of the “Housing and Work for the Homeless” program and other arrangements to improve social welfare services – Establishment of horizontal support services of the Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family and other provisions».

Addressing the competent minister, he said:I must say that we are also facing your bill with great concern, Madam Minister. While you have no reform proposal for social policy, we see welfare structures being closed. You, on the other hand, are now bringing us a bill for a ministry that does not exist. While the first thing you should do is a Ministry organization and a budget corresponding to the great needs of society, you bring us an ’empty shirt’, which has practically nothing and a broken social policy. We may have a different reading in the title of the ministry, but we have not at all underestimated the need to have a social policy. And in this ministry, the sensitive one you have taken over, even though this was part of the communication propaganda of Mr. Mitsotakis, you have not pursued policies neither for the family, nor for housing, nor for inequalities, nor for vulnerable social groups».

Generalizing, Mr. Famousos said: “As crucial as it is for Europe to practice social policy and it should be on the agenda of the European elections, it is as necessary and I would say much more necessary to have a structured social policy and policy of a fair society in Greece. Because all that prospers with Mr. Mitsotakis are dividends of big companies and super profits of a few».

He closed with an attack on the Prime Minister stating:With propaganda and sterile communication you create even more inequalities and tensions, because a citizen cannot hear from the mouth of the prime minister that after all the management of the next day of Tempe was a communication problem. If possible! We are talking about a society which now questions both politics and justice. And you say that all this is a matter of communication?».