Portugal’s government pledged that the number of fixed-term contract employees on the state payroll would be cut by 50%, but has failed to meet even half of that target.
The number of workers with fixed-term contract that left the comfort of the State’s employment in 2013 was 10,330, which compared to total employees with this type of contract at the end 2012, the reduction was 14%. The government had pledged in the 2013 State Budget that it would decrease the number of state employees by 50%.
In fact the largest reduction in this employment type in the government ranks occurred in the nation’s councils rather than in the overloaded ministries and still-bloated state bodies.
The Statistical Summary of Public Employment released on Monday shows that 49,000 civil servants have left the State’s employ since 2011, 22,000 of them left last year. Of these, almost half were employees with fixed-term contracts that ran out.
In municipalities the reduction was closer to the targets set. Late in 2013 councils employed 3,815 on contracts, contrasting with 6,589 at the end of 2012 - a reduction of 42%.
Of the Ministries, the Ministry of Education registered the biggest drop in this type of contract but in total the reduction by the central government machine was under 11%.
The glimmer of good news for taxpayers was that the amount paid to those civil servants remaining was down 8.6% against a target of 6%.
