"Yes, but" – Washington on missile defense shield and employers cut salary offers by half THANKS to crisis.
Press reviewed by Slawek Szefs
All today’s newspapers frontpage the horrific news about the killing of a Polish engineer by the Taliban in Pakistan. The 42-year-old Pole, held hostage since September, was decapitated during an execution filmed by his captors. The move had been allegedly in response to a refusal of Pakistani authorities to free Taliban prisoners from jail. ‘The Taliban murdered the Pole,’ writes GAZETA WYBORCZA. RZECZPOSPOLITA has information on quarrels among the Taliban whether to deprive the Poles of his life or continue dragging talks with representatives of authorities in Islamabad. ‘The abducted Poles is dead,’ headlines DZIENNIK quoting a witness who saw the man still on Friday. Umpteen hours after that, when the Pakistani government severed negotiations on the release of Taliban prisoners, the Poles was killed, he claims. We couldn’t do anything more, said PM Donald Tusk in Warsaw when asked by reporters on actions undertaken by Polish authorities to secure the release of the kidnapped engineer.
DZIENNIK also focuses on the weekend meeting of the Polish government head with US vice president Joe Biden during the international security conference in Munich. Donald Tusk assured his American partner that Poland holds continuous interest in hosting elements of the missile defense shiled on its territory. Vice President Biden declared equal interest on the part of Washington, however, conditioning the project on its dependability and economic feasibility. Though the statement goes further than had been expected, the daily wonders whether the new US administration is only playing it safe with regard to far-reaching pronouncements, or is looking for a diplomatic way out of the agreement signed with Poland and the Czech Republic last year.
In its labour-related Monday supplement, the already mentioned GAZETA WYBORCZA informs that many employers have been making use of the first signs of a crisis situation in Poland to introduce unjustified salary cuts. Job offers, especially for specialists, have been reduced even by half, with companies not only offering worse pay conditions, but also refraining from taking on the burden of paying social security for their prospective employees. The paper gives the example of a young corporate advertising expert who didn’t receive a single answer to hundreds of CV offers sent out to various companies, even when slashing his monthly remuneration expectations from the customary 4,000 to 3,000 zlotys. After changing his job-seeking tactics he succeeded with one offer after two months of door-to-door petitioning. Eighteen hundred was the magic number. Just enough to pay the monthly loan installments. Bills, rent and groceries are barely covered by my wife’s salary, he sighs.
The tabloid FAKT continues with its campaign of finding state budget reserves among governing ranks and political VIPs. Announcing that ‘the plague of deputy ministers will ruin us,’ it compares Polish realities in this respect with those in Germany. Ministry structures in Warsaw presently have 102 deputy heads compared to 52 counterparts holding such posts in Berlin. Their annual salaries total 15mln zlotys, they have office limousines with drivers at their disposal and a whole long list of bonuses. Is the Polish taxpayer obliged to finance such an army of bureaucrats, wonders FAKT.
And SUPER EXPRESS has a warning for tourists roaming the southeastern Bieszczady mountains. The above-freezing temperatures registered in the region for the past few days have given a spring-like stimulus to the local population of bears. Long weeks of winter hibernation have made the animals hungry and sometimes even aggressive, as in the case of female specimens with cubs born in January. Foresters are cautioning all hikers not to wander off specially marked trails and to avoid contact with the powerful brown furred species.