30,000 march in Prague protest

TENS OF thousands of Czechs have marched through Prague in the biggest challenge yet to the new government’s plans to cut public sector salaries.

The centre-right coalition is determined to shrink the Czech Republic’s budget deficit to 4.6 per cent of gross domestic product next year from 5.3 per cent this year, to avert what officials call the danger of a “Greek-style” funding crisis.

But unions have refused to accept proposals to reduce the amount the government pays state workers, from 12 per cent of overall public sector spending to 10 per cent, saying the way pay cuts would be introduced could slash some employees’ real salaries by more than 40 per cent.

At least 30,000 people paraded through the Czech capital yesterday, representing a wide variety of professions and unions.

“We are protesting against cuts in wages operational budgets that will impair our work . . . Crime plans no cuts,” police union leader Milan Stepanek told the crowd as colleagues waved banners saying “Less money, more crime” and “Your security is in danger”.

“These ill-considered measures risk being translated into a deterioration of citizens’ security,” Mr Stepanek added.

However, prime minister Petr Necas said: “I have said openly that the government will not back off, under any circumstances, from the lowering of total volume of wages in the public sector by 10 per cent.

“We are ready to discuss, and we are discussing, the concrete form of the reduction.”

President Vaclav Klaus, who founded the Civic Democrat party now led by Mr Necas, said the cutbacks were inevitable.

“The state was simply spending more money than it had . . . Now it will end; this is why cuts are necessary,” he said.

“They are being applied all over the world, and in an even more brutal way in a number of European countries.”