DURING the summer months, the Commerce Ministry receives dozens of complaints from Limassol residents reporting extortionate prices on goods, particularly in tourist areas, it was reported yesterday. But because of insufficient staffing the Ministry’s consumer service is incapable of dealing with each individual case effectively.
Tourists, rather than locals, are considered to be the vulnerable victims in the whole affair since they are more likely to accept being ripped off and do not know where to complain.
This tendency to overcharge tourists was highlighted by a Limassol radio station, Politis said.
According to the radio show, a hotel charged a Finnish tourist £4.50 for a local call that lasted half a minute. The same tourist, who has visited the island every summer since 1988 with his wife, reportedly told a friend that a mini-market in Yermasoyia’s tourist strip had charged him £1.50 for a small bottle of water and £2.50 for a small tube of toothpaste.
But unless an official complaint is corroborated by evidence, there is nothing the Ministry can do, George Mytides, Director of Competition and Consumer Protection at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, told the Cyprus Mail.
Even though prices have been liberalised in accordance with European Union regulations, said Mytides, shopkeepers are still obligated to clearly display each product’s price on the package or shelf. If this is not done, or if shopkeepers charge more than what the price tag stipulates, it is a criminal offence, he said.
Unfortunately, he added, tourists rarely complained and were an easy target for greedy shopkeepers. Locals on the other hand knew to forward their complaints to their district consumer and protection service.
Sufficient spot checks to ensure that shopkeepers adhered to this law could not be carried out either, he said.
“Due to a severe shortage of staff in the area it is impossible to cover all the thousands of shops in Limassol town centre and district,” Mytides said. The service’s staff quota is three employees, but this is reduced to two employees in the summer months because of holiday leave.
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.
