‘If Viber goes down, the police will go down, too’

Police officers are over-reliant on messaging application Viber due to the lack of an official electronic communication method, trade union Isotita’s police branch chairman Nikos Loizidis said on Thursday.

Speaking to Alpha TV, he said the police are suffering from a “lack of technological infrastructure for communication,” adding, “we are still in the era of the fax”.

In the absence of an official method of communication, he said, police are “forced to talk and communicate on Viber group chats. If Viber ever goes down, the police will go down too!”

He also took the time to criticise the police’s decision to require its staff to work longer hours for no extra pay as part of a clampdown on organised crime over the next two months.

He said, “some people have not realised that there are employment laws in this country and police officers are employees.”

Referring to the police’s call on Tuesday for officers to “feel the highest duty they have to serve,” he asked whether police could now be divided based on their merit of whether they would be willing to work for free.

“Are there now two categories of police officers? How did we divide the police into patriots and non-patriots?” he asked.

Isotita had on Wednesday threatened legal action over the plans, saying they will “make sure to move through the courts to collect the money our members deserve, up to the very last euro.”

They also criticised the chief of police’s “choice to invoke the patriotism and sense of duty of the affected members of the police in order to not pay them overtime for the next two months”.

They added, “without consultation and without identifying the problem which will be created in the police’s orderly operation, they proceeded with unilateral arbitrary decisions which violate the fundamental labour rights of police officers.”

To this end, they criticised the “disorganisation, sloppiness, lack of will, lack of vigour, lack of courage, and reluctance to dare to make reforms”.