Environmental officers to end at-home on-call duty from December

Lithuanian environmental officers demanding higher pay will stop being on passive standby from home from December, a move that could affect responses to environmental violations outside working hours, LRT reported Wednesday.

The Lithuanian Environmental Protection System Employees’ Trade Union said officers were withdrawing their consent to at-home standby. The union has notified members of parliament, the parliamentary Committee on Environmental Protection, the Environment Ministry and the Environmental Protection Department.

The union says the protest is driven by insufficient funding for the environmental protection system, low salaries and a growing workload. It estimates that Lithuania is short of about 15 to 20 percent of the environmental officers it needs.

The union’s main demand is a monthly take-home salary of at least 1,500 euros. It says meeting that target would require an additional 2.5 million euros in the 2027 state budget. Union deputy chair Dijana Rupeikienė said many officers currently earn about 1,100 euros a month, and receive an allowance of 20 percent of their pay for passive standby, compared with up to 50 percent in some other state institutions.

Union chair Vaidas Laukys said the action was not intended to weaken environmental protection, but to highlight the fragility of a system that relies on a shrinking workforce to operate around the clock.