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IMF head Christine Lagarde has urged Greeks to pay taxes, saying she worries more about the plight of children in sub-Saharan Africa than the people of the crisis-hit European nation, BBC reported.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Ms Lagarde suggested it was payback time for Greece.

The International Monetary Fund head said: "As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.

"I think they should also help themselves collectively," Ms Lagarde said.

She added: "I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time.

"Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens."

And when asked if she was saying to the Greeks and other European nations that they had had a nice time and it was now payback time, Ms Lagarde responded: "That's right."

She also reiterated that the IMF had no intention of softening the terms of Greece's austerity package.

Greece has been in recession for five years, crippled by a debt mountain, high unemployment and labour unrest over the austerity measures.

Opinion polls now suggest that the leftist bloc Syriza, which came second in Greece's 6 May election, is likely to win the vote on 17 June.

It opposes the stringent conditions imposed on Greece under its massive EU-IMF bailout deal.