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ATHENS (Reuters) - Before COVID-19, visits to Greece’s paper-strewn labour offices were a ordeal of queues and case files, often for basic matters that in less than a year have moved online as the pandemic upended old administrative routines.
An employee works at a Greek Manpower Employment Organisation (OAED) office in Kalamaki suburb near Athens, Greece, February 15, 2021. Picture taken February 15, 2021. REUTERS/Costas Baltas
“Essentially overnight, two thirds of the visits were no longer necessary,” said Spiros Protopsaltis, head of OAED, the Organization of Employment and Unemployment Insurance.
Crammed with thousands of folders and blue OAED registration cards spilling out onto desks and floor space, the corridors of the building where he spoke still offer a daunting vision of the challenge to overhauling public services in Greece.