CyBC will cut jobs to stave off crisis

THE CyBC administrative council announced yesterday that jobs are to be slashed in a bid to get the beleaguered corporation back into the black.

A press release said the measures had been approved during a meeting on Monday, and were recommended by a special committee appointed to study the issue.

The committee decided on the proposal after studying various scenarios suggested by international experts to cut costs across the board.

The new measures are part of a five-year plan to turn CyBC from a white elephant into a moneymaker, and call for a massive 269 organisational positions to be dropped, taking the number of employees down from 447 to 218.

Managerial positions are also to be reduced, from 18 to just ten.

Although the council did not say when or how the job cuts would be made, the announcement claimed the cuts would save CyBC a whopping £1 million a year.

Several schemes have been proposed to improve CyBC’s performance, including the dropping of one of the corporation’s two TV channels and one radio channel.

CyBC’s projected deficit for 1998 was between one and two million pounds when its £17.5 million 1998 budget was approved earlier this year. The deficit in 1997 was £3.3 million, and £4.4 million the year before.

The gradual fall in the deficit has been due to an increase the CyBC levy and a rise in lottery ticket sales.

At the time of the budget’s approval, Auditor-general Spyros Christou warned that if the corporation did not take drastic action to halt its decline, it would sink without trace.

Delays in reorganising working practices, fewer employees retiring than were provided for and soaring salaries in the face of declining programme budgets were all contributing factors to the situation, Christou said.

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