THE WELFARE Department has stopped paying benefits to a repatriated Cypriot family, leaving four children under the age of 10 on the breadline, their father Frederick Bryan said yesterday.
The 46-year-old computer technician – whose mother was Cypriot – arrived at Larnaca airport on October 3 last year, when he and his family decided to move to Cyprus from Switzerland.
“Life in Switzerland was getting too expensive,” he said “and even though I was offered a job in London, I didn’t want to spend my life working and never seeing my family. Therefore my wife and I decided to move to Cyprus instead.”
He and his German wife Annett, 36, came to Cyprus with their four children – Mark aged 10, Pearl eight, Jack six and Nicholaki aged two.
He soon found a job with a local firm, but at the end of November was forced to resign and has not been able to find work since then.
“I actually had to borrow five pounds for petrol to come here and talk to you today,” he admitted to the Cyprus Mail.
He has a Higher National Certificate (HNC) in Maths, Statistics and Computing and is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer with considerable experience.
“Despite this,” Bryan said, “I cannot find an I.T. position because they say I am either over-qualified, too old, do not know enough Greek, or the companies only want to pay well below the market rate and sometimes even below the minimum wage.”
At the moment though, he and his family have reached a desperate state, and he would do anything to earn a decent wage to be able to support them.
During Christmas, he tried to find work but it was impossible. His wife was qualified to accept a position as an engineering lecturer at a Nicosia college earning £1,000 a month, but says she was rejected when they found out about her alien status.
“I could work to support my husband,” she said, on the verge of tears, “but they will not help me by changing my residency status. My children are hungry. They have lost weight and even the school they are at in Larnaca has noticed their weight loss.
“It got so bad over Christmas that they gave us a hamper with food, and other parents recently gave us a few bags of groceries”.
Bryan said his wife sometimes skipped meals so her children would have more to eat and that this had caused her to lose 10 kilograms in the past two months.
“I’ve even had to water down the milk because the price has gone up and I need it to last longer for less money,” said the desperate mother. “My children haven’t eaten chocolate or biscuits in months. I can’t even afford to buy cheese or meat to put in their sandwiches, and have to resort to jam.”
So why are the Social Services not helping them out?
At first, Bryan tried to claim unemployment benefit, but was told he had earned £100 less than the qualifying figure and so his application was rejected.
The family was able to claim welfare benefit to survive the Christmas period and the New Year. They received £509.31, but were told it was a one-off.
When they asked for assistance to find a cheaper flat because theirs was £270 to rent, “we were told it was our problem and had to deal with it”.
Then at the end of January and the beginning of February they were given a total of £631.32 in two instalments, to cover their January expenses.
“Now, however, we have been told that we will not receive any more welfare. They are trying to force me to take cleaning jobs or factory jobs that pay less than the minimum wage. How can I support my family on £250-290 a month, particularly if the state won’t top up the sum?” he asked.
The Bryans are now disillusioned with Cyprus. They expected things to be different based on the Repatriation Handbook they were given at the High Commission in London and information from the Cyprus consulates in Zurich and Geneva.
They cannot go back to Germany because Annett no longer qualifies for welfare benefits there either, having been out of the country three years.
“The point is I can’t even afford to go anywhere anyway,” she said.
Asked how long their savings from Bryan’s job in Switzerland would last, they said: “Next week we’ll be in hospital on drips.”
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.
