INTERIOR Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou has rubber-stamped new regulations making it possible for some foreigners working on the island to secure unprecedented five-year permits.
“The regulations have now been approved,” Costas Hadjipavlou, a senior Immigration official at the Interior Ministry, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday. The new rules are designed to enable EU nationals and all non- Cypriots working in certain chosen sectors to meet the requirements of a recent law change making it harder for foreign workers to have their spouses with them.
The amendment, approved by parliament in late July, stipulates that foreigners must be “in possession of a working permit of a total duration of five years” before their loved ones can join them on the island. The sectors favoured under the Ministry’s new five-year permit rule are: offshore workers, reporters, foreign correspondents, accountants with big firms, lecturers, teachers and those who have invested more than £100,000 in local businesses.
Introduction of the new rules – drawn up in late September – was held up last month when Minister Christodoulou asked for clarifications on which foreigners were to be favoured. Hadjipavlou yesterday said the Minister had given the five-year permits plan the nod, and the regulations — which take the form of binding instructions for Immigration officials — were now in effect.
This does not mean EU nationals and the other chosen workers will automatically secure five-year work permits, Hadjipavlou pointed out. But it does mean favoured foreigners will be given long enough permits to ensure they can have their families with them on the island.
The July law change means foreigners must either have a five-year work permit or have worked on the island for five years or have some combination of worked time and work permit extension totalling at least five years. Hadjipavlou said the regulations approved by Christodoulou meant no one from a EU country or employed in a chosen sector would be deprived of the company of their spouse.
New arrivals will get five-year-permits while those renewing permits will be given extensions long enough to allow them to meet the ‘five years in total’ clause. The introduction of the new law for spouses caused an outcry from foreign worker groups, as no alien had even been known to secure a five-year permit and many aliens working on short permits seemed destined to be forced to wave goodbye to their loved ones.
But the Attorney-general’s office then said that the law change had prompted the Interior Ministry to begin drawing up criteria for granting five-year permits for EU nationals and anyone employed in certain chosen sectors.
This was good news for some, but the thousands of mostly Asian and Arab foreigners working on the island as farmhands, labourers, domestic helps or entertainers are still barred from having their families with them. The government say both the new law and the new regulations are in line with EU norms.
