Archive of articles - October 2002, page 6

Telecom sector still has highest wages

WHILE NOMINAL monthly wages in Slovakia are expected to show 10 per cent year-on-year growth for 2002, telecom workers continue to outpace the field with wages more than 60 per cent higher than the national average.According to the Slovak Statistics Office, the nominal monthly wage in the telecom sector averaged Sk23,400 for the first eight months of 2002, compared to Sk13,700 for industry and services as a whole (see chart, right).However, say analysts and labour representatives, the takeover of Slovakia's monopoly operator Slovak Telecom (ST) by German giant Deutsche Telekom (DT) has created a misleading picture: Managers' pay packets have swelled, while real wages for rank-and-file workers have declined, they say.

NCHZ gets green light on Solivary merger

New AgMin pushes competition, EU

New Internet programs promise few changes, say experts

NEW INTERNET services offered by the domestic monopoly telecom operator, Slovak Telecom (ST), are not likely to boost Slovakia's lagging Internet development, despite ST's claims, experts say.ST, which has often been blamed for slowing down the country's Internet penetration, introduced two new Internet packages October 1. In a series of PR articles published in the Slovak print media in early October, ST said that the new programmes would enable its customers to "pay much less for connection to the Internet".When they were first announced at the end of September, the new packages were heralded as a major step forward. However, once the details were revealed, experts said that the programmes will make very little difference to how much most users will pay for Internet access.

International human traffic gang busted

The lie as working method

HALF WAY THROUGH a televised debate October 13, opposition leader Vladimír Mečiar disputed a claim that his HZDS party had been rejected politically following last month's elections, saying the HZDS had actually held talks with the Smer party on forming a government.Smer boss Robert Fico, one of three other guests on the show, reacted as if stung. "That's a lie. I don't know where he gets that stuff," Fico said.Fico's charge is one Mečiar has heard many times during his 13-year career at the fore of Slovak politics, first from colleagues and contemporaries, later increasingly from political opponents and analysts. His ability to lie convincingly - to appear to believe everything he says even when it directly contradicts known facts or his own previous statements - has even been called the secret to Mečiar's enduring popularity and to his three terms as the nation's prime minister.

Chaplin on Chaplin

EUGENE Chaplin, 49, the son of the legendary English comedian Charlie Chaplin, went to the eastern town of Košice to premiere his recently completed documentary film about his father at the international festival of local television broadcasters Golden Beggar 2002.Charlie Chaplin's life story, which was presented in the movie by Eugene and his daughter Kierra, is a touching memory of one of Hollywood's legends that contains home movies never shown publicly before. The Slovak Spectator spoke to Eugene Chaplin on the day of the premiere, October 11.

Reader feedback: In praise of "fearless honesty"

Rusko sees no need for more TV stations

Košice police: Judge's error caused escalating crime

SIXTEEN cars have been firebombed in the eastern Košice region so far this year, six in the last month alone, in what police fear is an intensifying war in the local underworld.Because of the timing of the latest spate of firebombs, local police are connecting these crimes with a judge's procedural error that enabled seven Košice Mafia figures who were facing murder charges walk free. That happened on September 9, just two days before the newest round of firebombs began."The situation in this region is very serious, and it's all the Košice judge's fault," said Jaroslav Spišiak, first vice-president of the Police Presidium.

Letter to the Editor: Football violence, national shame

Metro impatient to start bridge construction

Prodi: Don't fall asleep and you're in

Samsung plans huge Slovak operation

Figeľ keeps negotiator job

Ivan Mikloš: "People weren't buying" media pessimism

SINCE BEING tipped for the post, incoming Finance Minister Ivan Mikloš has been promising that the country's new centre-right government will not be deterred from launching the tough reforms it has vowed, even at the cost of social unrest.Calling the majority victory of four ideologically united parties in September elections "an unrepeatable opportunity", Mikloš has said the new cabinet will change restrictive laws, sell off most remaining state assets and reduce the tax and levy burden on businesses in its four-year term in office.Reform of the education, health care, pension and social benefits systems - the core of the new government's programme - will force the government to recruit support from the civil service, which over the past four years has been one of the staunchest defenders of the status quo.

Analysts warm to 2003 budget plans

Lexa answers police summons

Another drunk cop wrecks car