ATHENS – Responding to comments made by Labour Minister Yiannis Vroutsis in a televised interview on Saturday, main opposition SYRIZA spokesperson Alexis Charitsis said the minister’s “crocodile tears” convinced no one, while insisting that there was incontrovertible proof of a link between vocational training centres benefiting from the discontinued distance-learning programmes – which he called a “fiasco” – and a legal consultant of the ministry’s secretary general.

Charitsis also pointed out that the minister, while previously claiming that the assistance to freelance professionals could only be given via the specific voucher scheme, because it came from EU funds, was now looking at ways to give the money to them directly, when the European Commission’s circular had expressly provided this second option all along.

Accusing the government of “unprecedented cynicism and managerial failure”, Charitsis challenged Vroutsis to reveal whether he had set up “this whole fiasco alone or in collaboration with the Maximos Mansion”.