Politician of The Greens in Tampere. Member of board of auditors at city of Tampere.

My name is Santeri Kärki and I’m running for first County elections in Finland on January 2021. My party is Vihreät aka The Greens. I am 29-years-old former university student, current worker at Kela and A Bachelor of Arts in History, as well as content creator, TV person and a soccer book Author.

County elections Campaign promises:

1. I promise to improve mental health services at Pirkanmaa. Everybody should get therapy within a week from initial contact.
2. I promise to consider all the environmental and climate effects on every political decision we make in Tampere. We can improve our health services and emergency services and do it ecologically.
3. I promise that I won’t be making any budget cuts to mental health services, health services or to social services. We have to improve all these services to make our region happier and to get everyone involved in the society. Especially child protection services should be improved and we should hire more staff.
4. I promise to give a raise to nurses’ salaries. The amount they are making at the moment is ridiculous and inhumane compared to the amount of work they have done during covid-19 pandemic.

My main goal is to make Pirkanmaa a better place for us all to live, no matter the gender or your former background or current workplace. Together we can make our region a place for anyone to live happily. We need strong support network from the city and thus we must have a good health care and mental health care for everyone. The lines especially for mental health care are way too long and getting help might take so long that people end up excluded from social and work life. Everyone deserve to get help as soon as possible, even if one can’t afford private health care. Mental health services have terrible queue at the moment and the city must invest extra money to make the lines faster – first therapy session should be held within a week after first contact.

In order to arrange operations effectively and to allow the county council do their job, we need to have some sort of a foreseeable taxation structure or some other methods of funding.

Healthcare near You, for You!

It is also vital for people in Pirkanmaa to get healthcare services near them. Some parties from the right (mainly Kokoomus) are ready to make major budget cuts and thus they are willing to end some healthcare centers. It is also a risk that these parties will raise the fees for visiting a doctor and that can not happen. I will try my best to make sure everyone can get treatment quickly, no matter how much income you have and you can get it near you.

To provide services near people, we will have to start giving a proper respect for the people doing the actual work. We need to put more money to the table and make sure nurses will stay in healthcare and they feel fine. We need to start treating people before their problems are too deep to easily treat. To do that we have to provide easily accessible services near people and maybe in the future we can offer some digital services, too, to get treatment in your native language as quickly as possible.

Social and immigration services need more funding

Social services are also in danger of getting through budget cuts. Currently services for integration and immigration are at their limits, as well as services for child protection and adult social work. We truly need more work power. For instance, in Tampere Kokoomus has been implementing major cuts for these services and all the regular people have been suffering a lot for a while. This has to end.

The best way to reduce costs in the future is to actually care about people who are customers for social services and the people who are working there. We need more funding and staff urgently, as currently there is simply way too many people per a worker. We need more preventive services and we have to be able to offer services in people’s own language as well. It is hard to integrate when you can’t help with the same language.

Child protection services should be improved a lot to provide our children a bright, safe future. We must put money to preventative services, as well.

Why should you vote in Finnish elections?

By voting in the elections, you can have a say on who will decide on important matters that concern everyone’s daily life. And I know that if people are not voting, Kokoomus will make our lives a lot harder by cutting budget from all the vital services that currently makes Finland the happiest place to be.

Voting is universal civil right in Finland and everyone living in any city or town can cast their vote. It is vital to vote, because the decisions made in the council are the ones that most effect your everyday-life. If you vote for somebody, the vote will be cast to the party itself – that’s why it is important to vote for someone whose party represents the ideas that suit you best. In The Greens we support values which will take into account every people no matter your income and we want to make decisions that will help your everyday-life and make every service less costly. Healthcare, mental healthcare, public transportation and family services should be in my opinion free-of-charge!

In politics one of my most important themes is also to make public transport as fluent as possible while allowing anyone to use transportation no matter where they live or how much they make per month. We need to keep the costs low for customers to courage people to use public transport a lot more, thus reducing emissions from private transportation.

Education is also important. We have to make sure that everybody gets enough help in the class. This is why I’d like to make class sizes a bit smaller and also add some additional staff to schools.

Also, keeping the city center clean and green is one of my most important priorities. Areas like Hämeenpuisto, Eteläpuisto or Pyynikki won’t need anymore gray buildings. As Covid-19 has shown us, having a possibility to go out and enjoy nature is vital for one’s mental health. We need to assure that everybody has a possibility for this, no matter where we live. We can build, but we need to select the areas responsibly and avoid destroying beautiful places that allow us to take a breath from the everyday-life.

Most important Themes summarized