In the past Koutsoukos had served as the chairman of public sector union ADEDY.

Now Greek media wonder whether he will vote in favor of the austerity package when it come for voting in the Parliament, most probably on upcoming Sunday.

Shortly after 4 pm, the office of the Prime Minister  issued a statement saying, that ”the political leaders agreed on the results of the negotiations between Greece and the Troika.”

This morning the Eurogroup has signaled that there would be no agreement today on the 2nd bailout for Greece, after the three coalition partners had failed to give their consent to all demands of the Troika. The Eurogroup meeting is scheduled to take place at 8 pm Belgium time.

The accompaning austerity programme worth 3.3 billion euro is one of the many preconditions for Greece to be given a second bailout of estimated 130 billion euro.

At the same time, unknown burglars broke into the shelter last week and stole all the food supplies.

One of the shelter volunteers, Ermioni Giannakou, describes the dramatic situation in Facebook:

The snow melted, the daily rains led to fill all the irrigation canals, to overflow, and all the water to drown the shelter literally! 

The images we saw yesterday morning were no words to express themselves, words are not easily articulated to convey all this destruction! 

Chaos … all the dogs in a river of water, many of them were trapped inside their houses, no dry place to sit, all sailing in the water showing the great destruction! 

Even the dogs had a look of bewilderment and despair in front of the picture they saw… everywhere … 

The hopelessness and despair was clearly at the faces of the volunteers who did not know where to start, what to do … 140 dogs at their mercy …Even the dogs approach was difficult, the water literally in many places exceeded the 45 points, we needed  boats to get to the dogs! 

We tried to extricate the handicapped, the sick and puppies, we called in desperation volunteers and others to take for a few days some of the puppies, since they were most at risk now, but we had almost no response since all people already hosted dogs… (further reading here)

The four shelter volunteers make an urgent and dramatic appeal for help. Food, vaccines, frontline, blankets… Anything that someone can spare…

Or just a donation. No matter how small or big.

The shelter “Filokardi” is located 3 km away from the highway Karditsa-Trikala.

You can reach Ermioni Giannakou at mobile +30-6930434093 and offer any help you can.

You can also send your donations through a chip-in in the shelter’s official website or via Paypal, e-mail: ermionigiannakou@hotmail.gr

more pictures in Facebook

PS I would appreciate very much if you can crosspost and share this post.

So far it has been known that Blue Buses, the Trollye, TrainOSE trains and Proastiakos  will not operate at on Friday and Saturday.

According to some information, only the Tram and the Urban train HSAP will operate between 10 am and 5 pm, to faciliate protesters to join the demonstrations planned for Friday and Saturday at 11 am outside the Greek Parliament at Syntagma Square.

There has been no announcement yet by the Athens Metro.

Check for updates!

In November 2011, the number of economically active was 3,901,269 people, and the economically inactive  4,423,657 people.

These data refer only to employees and do not show unemployment rates in the self-employed, owners of  very small,  small and middle enterprises.

Most hit by unemployment are young professionals and women. Unemployment skyrocketed to 48% in the age group 15-24, and almost one in two Greek youth is without job.

Among women, unemployment reached 24.5% in November 2011.

In order to boost competitiveness, the Troika imposed a sharp cut in the private sector wages for the youth until 25 years old. They will earn €510.94 gross, or 400 euro nett per month. With the new measures, the unemployment allowance will go down from €461 to €390 per month. The unemployment allowance is distributed for the period of one year only.