The difficult financial situation at the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), which in January announced its intention to lay off nine staff due to lack of funding, seems to have been partially resolved. The Finance Ministry has provided a subsidy of €57,000 to the institute, which in response has withdrawn three job termination notices, the institute's spokesman Ján Pálfy told the SITA newswire.
The institute's head, Ivan Petranský, asked the Finance Ministry in February for a subsidy of €193,330; the ministry's subsidy of €57,000 has enabled it to save three of the nine jobs. The employees being laid off described the notices as revenge by the ÚPN’s management's for their work on a new bill affecting the ÚPN, as well as for critical statements they had made in the media. The institute, however, claimed that the layoffs were necessary due to a lack of money. Among the three employees whose notices have been taken back is Marián Gula, who served on the working group of Prime Minister Iveta Radičová for preparation of the new bill on the ÚPN.
The original subsidy for wages and payroll contributions was €180,000 less than needed for the institute’s 73 employees, according to Pálfy. The overall budget for this year is €1.463 million, which is almost €60,000 less than a year ago and nearly €200,000 less than the institute says it requires. The parliamentary committee for human rights had tasked Petranský with preparing a proposal that would allow it to preserve all the current jobs with the same budget.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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