LARGE families and trade unions said yesterday they will lose out heavily if the House of Representatives goes ahead tomorrow and imposes restrictions on child benefits in relation to their parents’ annual income.
The government’s decision to introduce restrictions on child benefits based on their parents’ earnings is “unacceptable because it is an unfair and inefficient system”, the President of the Large Families Organisation, Demos Pissourios, told the Sunday Mail yesterday.
“Presently all families are given a tax-free allowance of £500 a year per child,” he said. “Now the House Finance Committee has suggested that this amount be abolished and instead each family be given grants according to parents’ joint annual income and how many children they have. However, over and above a certain income, no grants will be handed out.”
At present large families not only benefit from tax-free allowances, they are also given £31.35 per child per month. For an average four-child family this works out at £1870.20 per year, including bonuses.
The new law proposes that large families that earn over £40,000 will stand to gain nothing. On the other hand families with four or more children that earn less than £18,000 will be granted £2,600 per year.
According to one large family parent, Angelos Angelis, this might sound fair in theory, but in practice it most certainly is not.
“I know a paediatrician who earns an average of £43,000 a year. The problem is she has eight children, and as of Monday she will stand to lose out on £3,740.40 a year in benefits she used to receive. Can you imagine the expenses involved in bringing up eight children? How is she expected to do so without benefits?”
“Then take self-employed individuals for instance, or people with a lot of money in the bank who make interest on it. They may only state they earn less than £18,000, when in reality their income is much larger. They will be benefiting the most and yet need it the least,” Angelis said.
“The Finance Committee did not carry out a thorough study involving the pros and cons of this proposal,” he added. “They merely threw a few figures in the air and decided to push forward with them. This is absolutely ridiculous, since nowhere else in Europe are families restricted from benefits because of their annual incomes.”
According to Pissourios, there are 13,000 large families that benefit from child benefits today. At least 30-35 per cent of these families will be financially burdened if the new law is passed tomorrow, he said.
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.
