PETROLEUM refinery employees yesterday said they would not strike on the condition that the Commerce and Industry Minister kept his promise to find them other jobs when the site closed next year.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Lillikas said the government was going to do “everything within its power” to find alternative employment for those who found themselves out of a job. His promise came after the Cabinet decided to close the Larnaca oil refinery six years earlier than scheduled.
Around 125 employees were to be made redundant in 2010, but with Wednesday’s decision the employees will now be made redundant next year.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, employees union SEK secretary Glafcos Theodotou said should Commerce and Industry Minister George Lillikas fail to keep his promise, the employees would consider their next step.
“We are not going to take any measures against the government decision to cancel the upgrading of the refinery,” he said.
“We don’t think that any measures we take will overturn the Cabinet decision to stop the upgrading because we haven’t got the support of any political party or the local authorities. They just don’t see that 120 people will lose their jobs. Yes, they are highly paid, but they contribute.”
Theodotou said employees unions would hold meetings with Lillikas and any decision on what measures they will adopt would be taken after the meetings are concluded.
“We will have meetings with the Minister and we will only act if he does not keep his promise,” he said.
“What we can do is to wait and hope that Mr Lillikas keeps his promise to help the employees find other employment. But they have been telling us this for many years and in all our meetings we were always told we would be taken care of. We hope that this time, this government will help us find another job.”
Theodotou said the experience of the staff would be invaluable to the way the refinery was turned into a fuel terminal and insisted the employees should be the ones to dismantle the refinery in 2010.
“We would like to keep the staff in the refinery grounds,” he said.
“We are certain that we can find jobs for them here so that they can continue working here. When the import terminal is completed we want the refinery people to run it.
“We will demand that the people work in the terminal and we believe that we can offer other services here, such as the dismantling of the refinery in 2010 and the restoration of the area. All these works should be carried out by the employees because they are the most qualified people to do it.
“The supervision should be carried out by the refinery staff and we also believe that the terminal should be run by the employees. The staff should be allowed to organise the construction of the new energy centre at Vassiliko with the help of some foreign companies,” Theodotou added.
He said that the way things were going, the refinery would have to shut down on May 1 2004, because when the island enters the EU it will not be up to standards.
But he stressed the refinery should continue operating while the works to turn it into a terminal take place.
“Refining must continue while the works are being carried out or else the island will be without fuel. There is a way to continue refining while the works are being carried out and they should leave it to us,” he said.
Theodotou said the employees were devastated by the government’s decision and criticised the Cabinet for not understanding how much the refinery meant to its employees.
“There is a very heavy climate here in the refinery, as you can imagine,” he said.
“The employees are very upset, we have people here who grew up with the refinery and they will be thrown out in the street very soon. They are a generation of scientists that have invested their careers in the refinery and now they will lose their livelihoods and what they have invested.”
