Main power utility PPC, seeking to cut costs in a bid to improve its financial standing, plans to shed an initial lot of 200 jobs concerning staff members at various divisions who have already met retirement requirements but chosen to stay on.

These prospective retirees have been divided into three categories – administrative staff members aged at least 62, managerial level members aged at least 65, as well as workers aged 60 or over who are employed at mines and power stations and linked to a social security fund sub-category for physically strenuous jobs.

After examining the corporation’s payroll, the corporation’s administration determined that at least 200 employees will face mandatory retirement.

A company source told energypress that the board prefers to remove older staff members from the payroll rarther than cut generous bonus pay provisions offered to production-related workers at the utility’s power stations and mines.

Until now, the prospect of job cuts has been a taboo subject at the state-controlled utility, but its serious cashflow problem is forcing the board to take action. PPC owes and is owed considerable amounts, while various bailout-related measures being implemented to reduce the utility’s perennial market dominance are placing an even greater strain on PPC.

According to sources, the job cuts plan will be avoided at a PPC board meeting today following negative response, just days ago, by Genop, the utility’s main union group. The union condemned PPC’s chief executive Manolis Panagiotakis as being a pawn for the country’s creditors and investor interests. Genop boss Giorgos Adamidis will demand explanations for the job-cuts plan at today’s meeting.

The PPC corporate group currently employs approximately 18,000 staff members, according to most recent data, released at the end of last year. Of these, 1,450 are employed at subsidiary firm IPTO, the power grid operator, which will soon be completely detached from PPC’s influence once a split from the parent company is completed. Another PPC subsidiary, HEDNO, the Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator – locally acronymed DEDDIE – employs a further 6,500 or so staff members. PPC’s staff amounts to about 10,000 persons.