POLICE yesterday warned hotel managers they could be put behind bars if caught employing illegal foreign workers, at the start of a nationwide clampdown ahead of the summer boom season.
The maximum sentence for employers found guilty of hiring foreigners without a work permit is three years in jail, and/or a £5,000 fine.
Warnings will be followed by on-the-spot inspections, followed by prosecutions if police catch illegal workers red handed.
Police began to issue warnings to hotels yesterday. They warned that employers as well as illegal workers would be arrested, fending off criticism that employers have escaped prosecution in the past.
A manager was imprisoned for 25 days this month for employing an illegal immigrant.
“All hotels will be investigated. The law does not discriminate or create exceptions. We took the decision now, because the summer season is nearly on us and this phenomenon will increase,” immigration police officer, Sotiris Trifonas told the Cyprus Mail.
But the Hoteliers’ Association was yesterday unaware of the pending inspections.
“As an association, we have not been informed of this campaign, but I’m sure it’s part of their general campaign of checking illegal workers,” said chairman Zacharias Ioannides.
He said he supported the police action, but rejected accusations that hotels were guilty of employing large numbers of illegal foreign workers.
“Hoteliers in Cyprus are renowned and recorded in the minutes of official meetings at the Ministry of Labour for not employing illegal labour,” he said.
Of the tens of thousands of foreigners employed in Cyprus, he claims less than 1,000 are employed in the hotel and tourist industry, compared to a total workforce of 30,000.
“Foreigners mainly perform supplementary and secondary duties and they are only employed if there is a desperate shortage of local labour, or a shortage of ability in local labour,” Ioannides said.
Police said there was no question of prosecuting foreigners employed legally.
Some 350 foreign students are currently studying hotel management and hospitality courses in Cyprus, for which a stint of work experience at a Cyprus hotel is obligatory. Those doing so are also exempt from the police clampdown.
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.
