Pirates criticise new deputy labour minister

Prague, Jan 18 (CTK) - The Pirates criticise Oleg Blasko becoming a new political deputy to Labour and Social Affairs Minister Jaroslava Nemcova (ANO), about which the ministry reported on its website on Thursday.

Blasko occupied the same post from July 2013 for some six months under minister Frantisek Konicek in the interim cabinet of Jiri Rusnok.

Basko is the other political deputy that Nemcova brought to her office, after former Central Labour Office head Marie Bilkova.

Unlike expert deputy ministers, the political ones need not be selected in an open competition.

Pirate MPs criticise Blasko's previous work at the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry and expressed fears of his return to the post.

Under Blasko's management, a different information system was being introduced at the ministry in late 2013, while an audit from early 2014 proved that there were no due contracts on it, Pirate MPs Lukas Kolarik and Ondrej Profant said.

They also criticised the ministry' dependance on one supplier of information systems, the OKsystem company. Blasko was lobbying for the firm after he left the ministry, Kolarik said.

Blasko, a graduate from the University of Economics, worked with the Czech Social Security Authority and various firms before he came to the ministry.

Under its previous head Michaela Marksova (Social Democrats, CSSD), the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry put up a tender for the supplier of new information systems for 1.5 billion crowns, but it preparation was delayed. The deadline for their operation was postponed until 2019.

Nemcova, member of the ANO minority government of Andrej Babis that is to tender a resignation after it lost a confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies, has made many organisational and personnel changes in the office since January. The number of expert deputy ministers has dropped to six from eight, for instance.