July 13, 2023 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 13.07.2023, 19:50
STRIKE Disgruntled with
their salaries, trade unionists from Romania’s public finances on Thursday
picketed the headquarters of the Finance Ministry in Bucharest. Their main
claim is that the pay of the employees of ANAF and the Finance Ministry be
adjusted in keeping with the inflation rate. Protesters have also asked for
decent working conditions, for legislating the professional status and covering
the staff deficit. Also on Thursday, representatives of cancer patients in
Romania protested in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Health,
disgruntled by the fact that the provisions in the National Plan for Combating
and Controlling Cancer are not applied from the beginning of this month under a
law endorsed with a landslide majority in Parliament, promulgated by president
Klaus Iohannis and which has been in force since the beginning of the year.
WEATHER Meteorologists on Thursday issued a code yellow alert for extremely hot
weather valid until Sunday in several counties in Romania’s western, eastern
and central regions. The heat-humidity comfort index is expected to exceed the
critical threshold of 80 units with highs between 35 and 37 degrees centigrade.
The weather is significantly cooling in the rest of the regions with highs ranging
between 25 and 33 degrees Celsius.
HEAT A heat wave struck southern Europe
on Thursday, and according to Reuters, authorities have cautioned against
record highs next week. A weather warning has been issued for the Canary
Islands, an archipelago belonging to Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Greece. Authorities
in Greece have announced that temperatures can reach 43 or 44 degrees Celsius on
Friday or Saturday. Europe’s hottest temperature, 48.8 degrees centigrade, was
recorded in Sicily in August 2021, but, according to the European Space Agency,
it could be exceeded next week.
RESIGNATION
The Romanian Labor Minister Marius Budai stepped down on Thursday amid a
scandal regarding the care centers for the elderly. The Romanian authorities are
carrying on investigations at residential social centers throughout the
country. More than 1,500 centers have been checked so far, and 15 nursing homes
for the elderly, the disabled and children have been closed down. The activity
of another 26 has been suspended. The authorities have issued 60 fines worth
almost 800,000 lei (the equivalent of about 160 thousand Euros). A nursing home
that was operating illegally was identified and a criminal case was also opened
for abuse of office, fraud, false declarations, unlawful practicing of a
profession and tax evasion in the case of a commercial company that owns three
nursing homes. On the other hand, the Bucharest Court of Appeal will judge on
July 20 the appeals made by the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime
and Terrorism (DIICOT) regarding the placement under house arrest, under
judicial control or the failure to take any measures in the case of the 20
defendants detained last week in the investigation regarding the nursing homes
for the elderly and the people with disabilities from Ilfov county (south, near
Bucharest), where the so-called beneficiaries were beaten, insulted, starved,
subjected to forced labor and deprived of minimum hygiene conditions.
(bill)
