Greeks lining up for social services feel cash crunch biting

By Maria Petrakis

In the halls of the IKA state-welfare center on a recent rainy day in the Athens suburb of Neos Kosmos, Katerina Dimas and her eight-year-old son had front-row seats in the drama of Greece's cash crunch.

The 33-year-old hairdresser and her boy had spent three days trying to get her healthcare coverage renewed by IKA, which provides social security for 5.5 million Greeks and retirement benefits for 830,000 pensioners. The duo, who had arrived at the center at 6:00 a.m., were sitting in a corridor on a floor below where they needed to be because the crush of retirees and other people had left no room upstairs at the center run by Greece's biggest pension fund.

"The way things are going in this country I don't know if there's any point even thinking about a pension," Dimas said.
While Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras grapples with cash reserves that risk running out this month, concern is growing over how his seven-week-old government will find the money to pay about 1.5 billion euros ($1.59 billion) in monthly wages and pensions without a deal with European partners. Tsipras says there's no chance Greeks won't be paid, and also told creditors like the International Monetary Fund that they'll be reimbursed.

The country began on Tuesday to debate measures to boost liquidity as it braces for more than 2 billion euros in debt payments Friday. A vote on the bill is set for Wednesday.

That's even as Tsipras's government is struggling to convince its main creditors -- euro-area member states, the European Central Bank and the IMF -- to release more money from its 240 billion-euro bailout program. European governments say they won't disburse more emergency loans unless Athens implements a set of economic...