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Minorities Global Village Daily News

Italy: Government Goes After Lazy Public Sector Workers

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO
Associated Press Writer

ROME (AP) - As the stereotype goes, Americans toil away hour after hour, while over here in Italy, workers are more prone to lunching than laboring.

Italians tend to bristle at such easy categorization but on one thing there's little dispute: the nation's government employees are a lazy bunch.

Now, a government minister has launched an anti-slacker campaign to slay sloth in the bureaucracy.

"Ferraris, we can make. Designer clothes, we can produce. Sun, pizza and love, we can provide a lot of," said minister of public functions Renato Brunetta. "It's the public administration that is below par."

Brunetta has become a folk hero in Italy for his vow to modernize government offices and expel idlers among the 3.6 million public workers.

Low productivity, he acknowledges, is not exclusively a problem of the public sector, and the minister is counting on his efforts to nudge private companies into action, too.

"The public has woken up," he said, "it has had an epiphany."

But numbers point to some persistent dozing among Italy's workforce.

Labor productivity in Italy lags far behind other industrialized nations, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

OECD figures show labor productivity in Italy grew less than 0.5 percent between 2001-06, while in the United States, for example, the rate over 2 percent in the same period, and in fellow EU country France it was about 1.5 percent.

Italians take about six weeks of vacation a year, compared to a little over three weeks for workers in the United States and two for those in Japan.

With competition from Asia intensifying, Italy will dawdle at its peril.

The country is at zero growth and the prospect of a global recession only makes the outlook gloomier.

"Italy has a very difficult time ahead, so it can't afford to waste resources anymore," said Michel Martone, a labor law professor at Teramo University and Luiss in Rome. "Public spending must go toward efficiency and effectiveness."

Martone credited Brunetta's campaign with helping to wean the country away from a long-standing cynical view that the undeserving go unpunished and hard workers never finish first.

Brunetta insisted that laziness was a mere bad habit, not a fixed national trait.

"I don't believe Italians are anthropologically slackers," Brunetta said in a recent interview. "Italy is a country of small- and mid-sized companies, of self-employment. It is the country of people who take bold risks every day."

In the state bureaucracy, he said, "bad politics and bad unions have created a monster, a monster of inefficiency."

The laziness debate has burst from the corridors of power and into newspaper headlines, with tales that are half-tragic, half-comic.

The Turin newspaper La Stampa reported that a public employee in a small town on the northwestern coast, Mallare, punched his timecard, then went boar hunting. But, bad luck for him, he got shot in his leg and was found out.

A postal employee on disability leave reportedly spent part of her recovery vacationing in Kenya, saying the sun would help heal her sore back.

And the mayor of a village in southern Italy, Banzi, didn't come in for work on 166 days -- more than five months -- over an 18-month period, published reports said.

Public employees here took an average of 20 days off in 2006 for health or other reasons, according to government estimates. That is in addition to some 30 days of vacation for many public employees.

Brunetta, a 58-year-old economy professor and former adviser to Premier Silvio Berlusconi, is no slacker himself: he says he works about 13 hours a day.

"There is enormous potential, just waiting to be woken up and brought to light," he said of his country. "The public administration is the greatest reservoir for development that Italy has at this moment."

To reduce absenteeism, the ministry is cutting the bonuses of those who take sick leave. In certain cases of repeated absences, rigorous doctors' notes will be required. Brunetta has also started a survey to reward public workers who do a good job.

Already, the campaign is showing signs of success, having brought absenteeism down by about 44 percent in both August and September this year, compared with the same months in 2007, according to figures provided by his ministry.

Martone, the labor law professor, approved of the government's efforts, but expected a long fight to change Italian habits.

"Italy is full of people who want to rise to the top but don't know how. You need something like a social elevator: those who excel go up, but those who idle around, fake sickness, need to go down and get off," Martone said.

"This is a cultural battle that will require time and must be waged on many fronts," he said. "Italians, it seems, are starting to understand that."

___

Associated Press Writer Ella Ide contributed to this report

AP-CS-11-14-08 1313EST

Morocco: Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Sentenced For Terrorism

RABAT, Morocco (AP) - A former Guantanamo detainee has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a criminal court in his native Morocco, his lawyer said Friday.

Said Boujandia, 39, was found guilty of multiple counts of terrorism-related charges by the Sale criminal court near Morocco's capital, Rabat.

Morocco's official news agency said these included planning acts of sabotage targeting foreign interests in northern Morocco, funding and participating in a criminal group and illegal emigration.

Defense lawyer Toufik Msaef said he would appeal the verdict handed down Thursday because of mistakes in the prosecution's case.

"I'm convinced my client will be completely acquitted on appeal," Msaef told The Associated Press.

Morocco's official MAP news agency said a prosecutor told the court that Boujandia confessed to having traveled to Chechnya for training before heading to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban. His lawyer said he never confessed to any crime.

Boujandia was arrested on the Afghan border in 2001 and transferred to the U.S. military prison of Guantanamo Bay, where he was held seven years. U.S. authorities transferred him to Morocco in May.

Nearly a dozen other former Guantanamo detainees have been transferred back to Morocco, but Msaef said none has been sentenced there, in part because most prosecution cases are based on elements handed over by the U.S. military that are deemed shaky.

Separately Friday, the Sale criminal court, which specializes in terrorism cases, also decided to adjourn a trial involving 35 people suspected of involvement in a terror cell.

The trial has been adjourned to Dec. 26, said lawyer Khalid Sefiani, who defends some of the suspects. The group was arrested in February and accused of holding large quantities of weapons and explosives.

Interior Minister Chakib Benoussa said at the time that the cell's alleged leader, Abdelkader Belliraj, had links with al-Qaida and local terror groups and was suspected in six assassinations in Belgium from 1986 to 1989. Belliraj, 50, has been held in isolation since.

Viewed in the West as a pillar of Muslim moderation, Morocco has nonetheless seen a rise of political and extremist Islam in recent years. Hundreds of suspected Islamic militants are behind bars in this North African country, a staunch ally of the United States and Europe.

AP-CS-11-14-08 1133EST

India: First Lunar Probe Lands, Sends Back Images

NEW DELHI (AP) - The first lunar probe from India landed successfully on the moon Friday as part of a two-year mission aimed at laying the groundwork for further Indian space expeditions, the Indian Space Research Organization said.

ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair said cameras on board have been transmitting images of the moon back to Indian space control, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Chief among the lunar mission's goals is mapping not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath. If successful, India will join what is shaping up to be a 21st century space race with Chinese and Japanese crafts already in orbit around the moon.

The unmanned moon mission was launched from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Oct. 22. The box-shaped lunar probe carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer.

The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon's surface, the radar altimeter was to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface and the mass spectrometer was for studying the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.

The Moon Impact Probe was one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, a space agency statement said.

To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China -- and now India -- have sent missions to the moon.

As India's economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth -- built on the nation's high-tech sector -- into political and military clout. The moon mission comes just months after India finalized a deal with the United States that recognizes India as a nuclear power, and leaders hop the mission will further enhance its prestige.

While the moon race in the 1960s was a two-country sprint between the United States and the U.S.S.R, more countries are involved this time. China, in particular, has been forging ahead in space.

Beijing sent shock waves through the region in 2003, when it became the first Asian country to put its own astronauts into space. It followed that in September with its first spacewalk.

More ominously, last year China also blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile, the first such test ever conducted by any nation, including the United States and Russia.

India plans to follow this mission with landing a rover on the moon in 2011 and, eventually, a manned space program, though this has not been authorized yet.

AP-CS-11-14-08 1421EST

New Zealand: Maori Party Will Support New Govt. For Indigenous Rights Guarantees

By RAY LILLEY
Associated Press Writer

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - New Zealand's Maori Party struck a deal Wednesday to support the new center-right government, but Prime Minister John Key refused to say whether he would honor their demands that he safeguard indigenous rights.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said party members would soon be consulted to decide whether to accept the deal.

Traditionally, Maori -- New Zealand's indigenous people -- have supported the center-left Labour Party, which lost power in Saturday's election. Maori account for 15 percent of the country's 4.3 million people but are among its poorest and least-healthy citizens, suffering higher unemployment and crime rates than others.

Before the election, Key said his party was "diametrically opposed" to the Maori Party on some issues, and he campaigned on a promise to abolish the practice of setting aside seats for indigenous people in the nation's Parliament. But he also said he was prepared to strike a deal if it meant taking power.

The Maori Party has said it would demand that it retain the seats. It would also push for the repeal of a law preventing Maori from claiming rights to the foreshore and seabed and seek greater control over government spending on indigenous programs to prevent waste.

Turia said after Wednesday's talks that all policy issues were on the table.

"Our membership ... are urging us to go for it to ensure the Maori Party is able to maintain our reputation as the strong and independent Maori voice of Parliament, in whatever arrangements can be negotiated," said Turia. She also declined to spell out any details of the deal.

Key said Maori Party lawmakers had stressed they would "welcome a relationship" with National "to achieve better outcomes for Maori New Zealanders."

If a deal is signed, details of policy agreements will be publicly released "and you will see the ... proposals we have," Key told reporters. "I'm not going to comment on them at this point."

National won only 59 seats in Saturday's general election, leaving it shy of the minimum 63 needed to form a government. Key has already made deals with two minor parties to fill the gap. The agreement would give National five more votes, bringing its total to 70 in the 122-seat Parliament.

AP-ES-11-12-08 0207EST

Puerto Rico: Bahamas' Atlantis Resort's Low Occupancy Cited for Massive Lay-offs

By MIKE MELIA
Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - The Atlantis resort in the Bahamas said Wednesday it has laid off roughly 800 employees, blaming low occupancy rates as the global economic crisis curbs tourists' appetites for exotic getaways.

The cuts represent about 10 percent of the work force at the country's largest private employer.

"This decision is both difficult and emotional as we are fully aware of the impact on the employees affected, the remaining staff and the Bahamian community in general," said George Markantonis, president of hotel owner Kerzner International Bahamas Limited.

The Atlantic archipelago's tourism-driven economy is reeling from a steep decline in visitors from the United States. Hundreds of other hotel workers already have lost jobs or seen their hours reduced.

Atlantis covers three-quarters of Paradise Island, an 800-acre (320-hectare) island just off the capital, Nassau, and is known for its large marine habitat and fantastical pink towers. It completed a $1 billion expansion last year that brought its number of rooms to nearly 3,000.

Sol Kerzner, chairman and CEO of Kerzner International, said the layoffs at its flagship resort reflect cost-cutting throughout the company, which develops and operates casinos and hotels around the globe.

The United States typically accounts for more than 80 percent of tourist visits to the Bahamas. The decline began early this year and accelerated with the global economic crisis, said Georgina Delancy, research manager for the Bahamas Tourism Ministry.

"When September hit, things went south," Delancy said.

A hotel workers union is tapping a rainy day fund for the first time to help underemployed members pay their bills. As many as 6,000 workers will receive $1,000 payments, said Roy Colebrook, president of the Bahamas Hotel, Catering and Allied Workers Union.

Colebrook said the entire industry has been rattled by a tourism drought that has left half the country's hotel rooms empty in the months leading up to its peak season.

People "will try to find some other line of work," he said.

In a nationally televised address Monday, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham announced measures to contain unemployment, which he said was likely to rise from 8.7 percent this year to the low double digits.

He said the government will create jobs by accelerating a dozen public works projects, including a new school, road construction and improvements to Nassau's international airport.

Delancy said tourism in the former British colony has not faced such a serious challenge since the months following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"We expect to bounce back," she said.

AP-CS-11-12-08 1932EST

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