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ESTONIAN DAILY PRESS REVIEW (0)

LETA LETA
29.08.2005 12:34

POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Estonia plans to merge the emergency centre phone line 112 and police emergency calls phone line 110 but no timeframe of the process has been prepared yet, a response by the Rescue Board to an inquiry of European Commissioner Viviane Reding states. Rescue Board emergency centre deputy director Ene Hauvmann said that in Finland, for example, the preparatory period to merging the centres was 5-6 years. Although 112 is the single emergency telephone number for the European Union as stipulated by the European Union Council decision from 1992, only a few member states like Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Portugal have completely adopted the single SOS calls number system. (Eesti Päevaleht)

Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip put brakes on the supplementary budget money distribution proposal that would have increased the financing of vocational schools, that have suffered from underfinancing for years, already this year. Education minister Mailis Reps said that the prime minister said that first, political priorities would have to be listed. (Äripäev)

Although universities use widely the possibility of accepting several times more students than usual this year, they can guarantee the student’s grants that initially were also considered customary, only to a few. When the student’s grants law was adopted, the number of recipients of the grants was to equal a third of the number of students subject of state-financed studies. The new enrolling system makes that an unattainable dream. (Eesti Päevaleht)

Judge banned on Friday Vladimir Razumovski, Veterinary and Food Board deputy director general who is suspected of repeated acceptance of bribes, to work in the Board as an adviser as the man can influence witnesses and obstruct the investigation. The court freed Razumovski from detention on July 21 for 356,000 kroons bail. Razumovski had been under arrest since March. In August he started working as the Board’s adviser again. (Postimees, Eesti Päevaleht)

The Estonian government specified with its decree the spheres of business where initiation of environmental influences evaluation must be considered when planning any activities. The list includes a hundred spheres of business, starting from energy industry and ending with food industry. The decree ends the confusion of officials of when the environmental influences evaluation has to be initiated. (Postimees)

The Estonian Railways Inspection discovered a number of inadequacies in the railway crossings that the Edelaraudtee passenger railway firm manages and gave it till the end of the year to liquidate the problems. The inspection’s director general Jüri-Karl Seim said that the main problem is poor visibility at railway crossings. In the first half of the year, there were six accidents at the railway crossings Edelaraudtee manages, and 3 people were injured. Edelaraudtee is responsible for 76 crossings. (Eesti Päevaleht)

BUSINESS AND ECONOMY

Trade unions state that Estonians who work in Finland are paid lower wages than Finns are paid, since in Estonia, trade unions don’t have much influence and workers aren’t informed of their rights. Thus Finnish and other Scandinavian trade unions launched a 150,000 euro project with the help of EU funding to persuade Estonians to join trade unions and find solutions to exploiting of workers who come from the Baltic states. (Postimees)

Estonian Statistical Office announced on Friday that the average monthly gross wages and salaries of full-time and part-time employees of enterprises, institutions and organisations were 8,291 kroons in the 2nd quarter of 2005, higher by 11.8% year-on-year. The acceleration of the wage increase has been influenced by the change in the wage level of employees of enterprises with less than 50 employees — their average monthly gross wages and salaries increased by 15.8% compared to the 2nd quarter of the previous year. (Äripäev)

Eesti Päevaleht analyses the unexpected resignation of Ain Hanschmidt from the post of head of SEB Eesti Ühispank, and accepting a top job in Infortar, a company that owns Estonia’s largest passenger shipping company Tallink, asking whether Hanschmidt saved one of the flagships of the Estonian economy or just filled up his wallet when back in 1996 Ühispank reorganised Tallink’s predecessor Hansatee. (Eesti Päevaleht)

Textiles industry Kreenholm aims to end this year with a half a mln kroons profit, which would be the first year after 2002 when Kreenholm earned a profit. It was deepest in red in 2003, when the loss amounted to nearly 64 mln kroons. The holding company Kreenholmi Valduse AS received 5.7 million kroons of profits during the first six months this year. (Äripäev)

Sorbes AG, a Swiss company acquired full ownership of AS Repo Vabrikud and is planning to invest 200 mln kroons in the firm to increase production volumes significantly. The Swiss investment company bought the shares of AS Repo Vabrikud in August, buying 49 per cent of the shares from SEB Eesti Ühispank. (Äripäev)

Legendary journalist of Äripäev business daily Inno Tähismaa will leave in September to start working as the public relations manger of the finance ministry. (Äripäev)