New complaints bureau for communications ministry

APRIL 3 will be the kick-off date for the new Citizens Complaint Bureau in the Ministry of Communications and Works, the bureau’s newly appointed director Katerina Economou Siamtani said yesterday.

"Because the government is not personal, through this service we are trying to build a personal relationship with the citizens," Siamtani said.

With the inauguration of the new complaint bureau will also come the publication of a government directory, "so they will have name and a telephone numbers they can contact" with a problem," she said.

The new bureau hopes to be able to handle and reply to "personal complaints that people write or see the minister about, and they expect an answer to," Siamtani said.

These complaints can range from postal service foul-ups that cause job-applicants to miss interview examination dates, to delays in repairing roads and pavements, or erecting them at all.

The new bureau will also give citizens instructions in cutting the red tape involved in such things as getting drivers’ licenses or simply using the island’s airports.

And it will create a liaison office within the ministry among the various departments to speed up response and sensitivity to citizens’ complaints, she said, and to document the shortcomings of the different departments and correct them.

Siamtani acknowledged that there were still many unfilled vehicle-inspector positions in the Road Transport Department, but blamed this on the seesaw freezing and unfreezing of the positions by the civil service system.

She said the positions were now being unfrozen and advertised and applications being taken to fill them.

Vehicle inspection has been a pet project of Traffic Police Chief George Voutounos, a programme he sees as one way to reduce the island’s road carnage.

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.