Georgians living in Greece enjoy free consular services for three days
By Tea Mariamidze
Thursday, July 2
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia (MFA) has released a statement which says that the citizens of Georgia living in Greece will be able to receive services in consulates and embassy free of consular fees on July 1, 2 and 3.
The decision was made due to the current financial crises in Greece, which was unable to pay debt ˆ1.6 billion to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The banks in Greece are closed before the referendum to be held on July 5, 2015 and people can take out only 60 Euros per day from ATMs.
According to the MFA, the embassy of Georgia in the Republic of Greece and the General Consulate in Thessaloniki continue to work regularly and are doing their best to help Georgian citizens.
The ambassador of Georgia in Greece, Josif Nanobashvili, stated that the restrictions in the country cover everybody including citizens of Georgia, but inside country transfers and cashless payments are unlimited for everyone.
According to him, applying of Georgian citizens to the Consulates and embassy has not increased, but has reduced recently.
He denied the spread information that Georgian immigrants in Greece have problems with getting their salaries and some of them have no food.
“Generally there are halts in getting salaries for everyone and the employers assure that they will pay salaries to the employees gradually, so the situation is not that dramatic,” he said.
According to the Georgian immigrants in Greece, the situation is very hard.
They say that everything depends on the up-coming referendum of July 5, after which they will decide to leave the country or not.
At the referendum the citizens of Greece will have to decide whether they support the country's tough economic reforms of to not. In case the Greek voters do not support the proposal to international creditors to carry out tough economic reforms instead of the payment of the debt, Greece will have to leave the Eurozone.
