The former head of the medical workers and social care union, Valdis Keris, reacted on the pietiek.com portal to Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs' statement that representatives of non-governmental organizations received fees from the state for participating in various working group meetings! The Prime Minister was shocked. "I’m shocked too," Valdis Keris wrote. "It turned out that the State Chancellery was paying representatives of non-governmental organizations, the Civil Union, and other organizations for work carried out within the Council based on a Memorandum between NGOs and the Cabinet of Ministers, covering both participation in council meetings and in the working groups created by the council. At the same time, the participants of the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation (NCTC) — internationally recognized social partners of the government — were not paid a cent for similar activities. I can state this with full responsibility, as I was a representative of the Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia in the NCTC from 2006 to 2025. This clearly shows how discriminatory the previous attitude of the Latvian government towards trade unions was. I would hope that the government will soon publish a complete list of NGOs and similar organizations that received state funding for cooperation with the government, as well as the justification for such different treatment. After all, if some non-governmental organizations are paid by the state for dialogue with the government while others are not, I would like to know why that is. For clarity.