A partial unfreezing on hires for police officers and fire fighters has been approved by the Finance Ministry, paving the way for 250 badly-needed positions by early next year.
Following a recent vote in the House on regulations for hiring new officers, police can now expect 210 new colleagues while new blood in the fire department would reach 40.
The Justice Ministry and the Police will expect the new regulations and the piece of legislation on hires to be published in the next two weeks.
But human resources staff with the police are not wasting any time.
Police are already drafting a plan to establish a system by which candidates can submit their applications electronically.
According to daily Phileleftheros, candidates who already submitted an application during the recruitment for the Menoyia migrant detention facility will not be considered for the new posts, unless they submit a new application under the new system.
This means that any candidate, man or woman, who wishes to be considered for a job with police will have to go through the entire process all over again, including jumping through all the hoops, taking the exams, and going through various evaluation tests.
New criteria also bring new age limits, climbing from 28 to 35, but not counting special officers. New height minimums will be 1.65 metres for men and 1.60 metres for women.
Recruits also won’t have an verbal exam during the whole process, as the government argues that such tests was too subjective and opened the door to special favours.
Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou, who has publicly admitted there was systemic corruption within the echelons of police, said on Tuesday that the government is sending a clear message against bad cops.
“We want to send a clear message that our effort and aim is to put in place objective criteria that are based on merit as much as possible, curbing subjective judgment,” the minister said.
The total of 250 officers make up about half of the current needs in the police and fire departments.