Neophytou: civil service risks total paralysis

By Athena Karsera

THE COMMUNICATIONS Minister yesterday warned the civil service was on the verge of total paralysis.

Speaking following spot checks at various of his ministry’s departments in Paphos yesterday, Neophytou said: “We established the usual, that the system is handicapped with the danger of becoming completely paralysed.”

The Minister said certain departments that he had checked had shown that “the people in the system are not productive enough to justify their salary.”

“We don’t want this finding today in certain departments and certain services to be considered a general rule, but we do have an obligation to the people we serve to inform them of our findings,” he added.

Neophytou would not say which departments he had visited or which were especially at fault. “There is no reason to name a specific employee or department.”

The minister is understood to make such spot checks within his department on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Neophytou also used his time in Paphos to visit the town’s airport.

Accompanied by Ministry director Vassos Pyrgos and other officials, Neophytou said his goal was to check on the effectiveness of measures taken to improve the airport. “We listened to the opinions of the workers and people who use the airport.”

The Minister said his “general impression was that the situation has been improved,” and that any problems mentioned were “small to non-existent and to be expected”.

Neophytou said £500,000 had been spent on improving the departure lounge to serve the 1.5 million people expected to pass through the airport by the end of the year.

He added that while no changes had been made to the arrival area yet, a study would be undertaken to improve the space by the next summer and that another £500,000 would probably be spent on the airport by the end of this year.

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.