New security plan for airports

A NEW plan was approved yesterday to increase security and smooth immigration procedure at the island’s airports.

The plan was jointly drawn up by the Ministries of Communications and Works and Justice, and was announced after a meeting between their respective Ministers, Averof Neophytou and Nicos Koshis.

It includes the reduction of the number of entrances at Larnaca and Paphos airports to allow stricter checks on those entering and leaving the buildings, Neophytou said.

He also said stricter measures would be applied to airport staff who would be assigned special passes to come and go.

Other infrastructural works would also be carried out to ensure the smooth running of airport services to passengers.

Iacovos Papadopoulos, the Director of Civil Aviation which comes under Neophytou’s ministry, told the Cyprus Mail he could not comment in detail on the security measures.

“There are no real problems with security but there is always room for improvement,” he said.

As far as improving services at the airports, Papadopoulos said there is a provision to hire more staff on the immigration side to ease problems as a result of the expected increased tourist flow.

“This problem is being solved already,” he said. “This year was much better than last year.”

Papadopoulos said, however, that the meeting had not discussed the apparently racist attitude of some immigration police to certain passengers passing through the airports.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.