Andry takes her anti-smoking battle to court

A NICOSIA company may be forced to pay a settlement of up to £25,000 in a precedent-setting lawsuit filed against it by an anti-smoking former employee.

Andry Olymbiou left a highly paid job in April after her complaints of being subjected to passive smoking fell on deaf ears. She then staged a week-long hunger strike outside the House of Representatives, saying she was determined to take her case as far as the European Courts if she had to.

While a hearing date has not yet been set, Olymbiou’s lawyer Christos Triantafyllides earlier this month submitted the lawsuit to Nicosia District Court, demanding compensation of between £5,000 and £25,000 for his client.

The lawsuit also requests a court proclamation that the company forced Olymbiou to abandon her job against her will and best interests, and that the company broke the law on smoking.

Olymbiou recently told the Sunday Mail she was not proceeding with the lawsuit for the sake of the money: “The most important thing for me is for a precedent to be set so that other people don’t have to go through what I did,” she said.

Olymbiou said she was not against smokers, but she did expect them to respect her rights and her health. She added that her husband and son smoked but showed consideration for their family’s health and did not indulge in the habit at home.

Olymbiou began her approximately £1,000 per month job as a development manager at the company on November 1, 1999, and while currently employed elsewhere she has not been able to find a job of the same calibre as the one she left.

Her anti-smoking drive was not the first time Olymbiou hit the headlines. She was widely featured in the media in 1990 when her fund-raising efforts put thousands of pounds towards setting up an adoption programme from Romania to Cyprus.

“We are all put on this earth to offer something,” Olymbiou told the Sunday Mail, “Some of these children were ten or more years old when they were adopted, and now they are married with families of their own. It’s a beautiful thing.”