Finland Times

The Kouvola municipality authority has undertaken a programme to terminate 600 jobs by the end of next year as part of its move to save expenditure.

The mayor of the municipality Lauri Lamminmäki is going to publish a cooperation process on Monday with the target of terminating about the 600 workers where about 6600 employees are working now, municipality sources said.

Meanwhile, the regulatory authorities of the municipalities also hinted that more municipalities are likely to face similar situation as part of their respective expenditure cut programme.

“The decisions for cutting more jobs in other municipalities are also coming in future,” the director of the municipal employers Markku Jalonen told STT on Thursday, adding that  the job cut programme is not only going at the Kouvola and Salo municipalities.

He said that other municipalities are also going to take similar programmes to save money.

“The job cuts programmes will be implemented through sending the employees to retirement and reorganizing the structure,” said Jalonen.

Sources said that 27 municipalities, where  a total of 50,000 employees work, are going to take the termination process.

Jalonen said that the municipalities undertook saving programmes which are still not enough everywhere.

He believed that the most challenging situation for the municipalities is structural change as like the Kouvola and Salo are going to take.