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11/16/2004
The Cabinet has approved pension bonuses for former political prisoners and labour camp inmates under the communist regime. Meeting on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the protests that led to the fall of communism, the Cabinet approved a directive according to which former prisoners of conscience should in future receive regular bonuses to their pensions, 50 crowns for every month that they had spent in a communist prison or labour camp. According to the Confederation of Political Prisoners the new directive will affect some 6,000 former political prisoners. Those eligible will have to apply for the bonus.
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11/16/2004
The police has charged five people with trafficking in babies. According to police spokeswoman Iva Knolova further arrests may follow. Several days ago the police prevented a planned transaction at Trebic airport, arresting a doctor and young woman as they were preparing to hand over a newborn to a childless couple. The woman had a large amount of cash in her possession. According to the police spokeswoman the ringleader is a woman and the gang includes a head of department of a maternity ward. Those involved could face up to ten years in prison.
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11/16/2004
A transsexual is planning to sue the Czech military for discrimination, after the army refused to employ her as a driver. Thirty eight year old Jaroslava Brokesova was turned away despite the fact that she passed all the necessary tests. The military's health committee rejected her application on the grounds that she had undergone a sex change operation. Brokesova says she plans to file two law suits, the first in an attempt to overturn the committee's decision, the second to claim damages for having been forced to make her case public.
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11/16/2004
The Czech government has delayed a decision on selling its majority stake in the telecommunications operator Cesky Telecom, amidst a ministerial split on how best to proceed. Several ministers, including Prime Minister Stanislav Gross, favour a flotation on the capital markets but others claim that selling to a strategic investor would be a better long term option. A floatation of the state's 51 percent stake would bring immediate funds to the cash-strapped government. Several previous attempts to sell the government's stake in Telecom failed.
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11/15/2004
The deputy chairman of the main opposition Civic Democrats, Petr Necas, told Czech Radio's radiozurnal programme on Monday that his party is ready to form a "broad consensus of political forces" to push for holding early parliamentary elections, now scheduled for 2006. The centre-right Civic Democrats won 18 of 27 seats being contested for the Czech Senate this month while the ruling Social Democrats failed to pick up a single seat. Commenting on these results, Mr Necas said the "democratic legitimacy" of the Social Democrat-led government was "gradually disappearing". This year, the centre-right Civic Democrats defeated the left-leaning Social Democrats in regional Czech elections and in the country's first elections to the European Parliament.
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11/15/2004
The health minister, Milada Emmerova, has presented the government with her draft five-year plan to reform the nation's heath-care system. Her proposals include increasing state oversight of health insurers and reducing spending on drugs. Ms Emmerova also proposed that every state hospital appoint an ombudsman to address patients' concerns.
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11/15/2004
A Prague district court on Monday sentenced 14 alleged members of a criminal gang for trafficking in human beings. The leader of the gang, a Chechen named Ivas Muzavev, was given a four-year prison term and fined 400,000 crowns. Other members of the gang, which included several Armenians and eastern European nationals and employed Czechs drivers, received suspended sentences or at most three-year prison terms as well as fines. Police said the gang had illegally transported at least 1,500 people across Czech territory from August 2002 until the ring was broken up in October last year. The gang initially focused on transporting people from India and its neighbouring countries but had begun to specialise in the former Soviet republics.
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11/14/2004
The acting head of the senior government Social Democrats and Prime Minister Stanislav Gross told the Internet news server iDnes that his party will consider the abolition of the Senate in the future, after the results of the second round of Senate elections were published on Saturday. According to Mr Gross, the Social Democrats will consider this measure because of the extremely low turnout, about 18 percent, in the second round of voting on Friday and Saturday. The head of the junior coalition Christian Democrats Miroslav Kalousek said he was surprised by this idea and compared the situation to someone who "loses a game and then wants to abolish the playing field".
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11/14/2004
The Health Minister, Social Democrat Milada Emmerova has said that the leadership of the party discussed the possibility of early general elections at its Saturday meeting. Speaking in a televised debate on Sunday, Minister Emmerova added that early elections were not the Social Democrats' first option but merely one of the possible alternatives. The Social Democrats experienced election defeats in June in the European elections, last weekend in the elections to the regional assemblies and in this weekend's second round of Senate elections, where no Social Democrat candidate was elected.
The senior opposition Civic Democrats won all three of the elections and the junior opposition Communist Party finished second, ahead of the governing Social Democrats.
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11/14/2004
A report by the Statistical Office of the European Communities, Eurostat, says that Czechs have the longest working hours in the European Union. In the Czech Republic people spend more than 42 hours at work every week which is by five hours more than the European average. The Eurostat study also says that part-time employment in the Czech Republic is rare compared to other EU states and the country has a high rate of long term unemployment.
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