Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Greek 'Tsunami Of Poverty'

Greece will face a desperate situation this autumn, with a wave of poverty stemming from its crippled economy, Costis Dimtsas, a spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Athens warns.

"We are at the beginning of the wave," he said. "At this moment, we just learnt that the tsunami is coming. In September we will see it, and next year we will see the results."

The Church runs a number of feeding stations and shelters around Greece, through a project known as 'The Mission'. Since the crisis began, those centres have seen a sharp increase in the number of Greeks seeking help.

"About 60% of the beneficiaries are now people of Greek origin,"
Mr Dimtsas said. "Two years ago, the statistics were inverse. We had 25-30% Greeks and the rest were immigrants. We are handing out 10,000 meals per day. We've been doing it for the last three months in order to confront the financial crisis." He explained "The tragedy is the increase in ages - unemployed people who are over 45 and cannot find a job again, and older people who are suffering lately from the reduction of their pensions."
http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16056922

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