Students blockade institute

DEMANDS for the upgrading of Higher Technical Institute (HTI) diplomas and the creation of a government post for the institute’s graduates yesterday boiled over as protesting students blockaded the HTI, refusing to allow teachers inside.

The students set up the 7am blockade claiming they had been let down by Finance Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou over promises regarding their demands.

HTI Student Union president Emilios Rotsides said the students were annoyed because the minister had not kept promises he supposedly made to answer the students’ demands after a series of meetings earlier in the year.

He said Christodoulou was trying to make out that his statements had been misinterpreted, but the students would not accept this and expected promises to be kept.

If their demands were not addressed, he warned, further action would be taken. The students are to meet with Labour Minister Andreas Moushiouttas today to discuss their problems.

But Christodoulou said yesterday the government was doing its best for the students, and pointed to statements he had made after the earlier meetings as evidence of this.

The students, he said, should put their opinions through graduate representatives who were now working in the civil service and were members of civil servants union Pasydy – another point on which Rotsides attacked him, saying the minister was “trying to kick the ball into Pasydy’s court”.

Christodoulou also criticised the student leaders, saying they were not giving the students good advice.

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