CYPRIOT ship surveyors who carry out inspections on the island’s fleet abroad have threatened a work to rule in protest over alleged government stinginess on their expenses.
According to shipping newspaper Lloyds List, industrial action by surveyors is thought to be without precedent, at least in recent years.
The paper said that any walkout would hit the ability of Cyprus, the world’s fifth largest ship registry, to carry out its inspection obligations.
Around 26 surveyors have told the Merchant Shipping Department (MSD) that, as of February 1, they will no longer inspect Cyprus-flagged ships abroad, though inspections at Cypriot ports will continue.
The union representing the surveyors said its members were merely complying with their employment contracts.
“The continuous policy of the government not to provide them with extra benefits for rendering services beyond their agreed scheme of service has resulted in the above decision,” an announcement said.
The government is currently using the surveyors to audit and verify the quality of the work carried out on its behalf by classification societies.
The union said the government had recently tried to include these duties in contracts to be renewed, without any extra benefits for the surveyors.
The MSD said the issue would be sorted out and that the demands were being discussed. It said services would not be affected because the MSD also had non-exclusive surveyors in many ports in other countries.
Sources in the department told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the surveyors were being unfairly and pettily treated with regard to expenses when abroad.
“The surveyors in the department are highly qualified, dedicated and discharge their responsibilities in a professional way,” the source said.
“Sometimes the missions they are sent on are risky and dangerous.”
The source said that in one example, a surveyor had been refused a dinner allowance because officials determined he had eaten on the plane.
“He said he didn’t eat on the plane and they asked for a letter from the pilot to prove it. This is embarrassing,” the source said.
“If you are sent on a job to Indonesia, where often you don’t get receipts, do they really believe the surveyors stayed with friends and relatives there and not pay.”
The sources said that following a few cases where hotel costs had worked out cheaper than the allowance, the accounts department had gone as far as proposing an official reduction in the allowance.
And they added that the demands made on surveyors include being sent to the site of a ship at any time — “Christmas, midnight”.
“The government is paid high rates of overtime by the ship owners. But for the surveyors its zero zero zero,” the source said. “The work they are entrusted with is serious work and they are only asking for their rights and demands.”
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.
