HYPERMARKET owners who flagrantly and repeatedly violate shop closing hours will be prosecuted, Labour Minister Christos Taliadoros threatened yesterday.
The Minister was referring to the large number of hypermarkets that have failed to resume to normal opening hours following the Christmas season, incensing trade unions SEK and PEO.
Taliadoros said: “There is a law for shop working hours and it must be implemented. Whatever law exists must be implemented. People cannot take matters into their own hands and do as they please, otherwise they should not live in an organised society, but elsewhere.”
He added that Ministry officials as well as the police would be called to step up inspections and said in some cases would go ahead with prosecutions, “especially for those who repeatedly violate the law.”
Winter closing hours are 2pm on Wednesday, 3pm on Saturday, 7pm daily and closed on Sundays. However, a number of hypermarkets have blatantly refused to return to these closing hours, opting instead to remain open till 7pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays even if it involves paying a £50 fine.
PEO General-secretary Pambis Kyritis also condemned the hypermarkets for taking it upon themselves to breach the existing law, irrespective of the consequences, and said it not only provoked workers, but all of society.
“The hypermarkets’ high handedness must not be allowed to continue,” added SEK General-secretary Demetris Kitenis. He added that it was inconceivable that the most “vulnerable segment of workers” should be forced to work “detestable hours” for “low wages” and called on the Labour Ministry to take charge of the matter and resolve these violations once and for all.
“It is the state’s responsibility to implement the law to the letter and to put an end to tolerating violations,” he said.
But Cyprus Hypermarket Association Executive Secretary Andreas Hadjiadamou pointed out that the Ministry should not be selective in its prosecutions.
“Might I remind you that it has been over a year now that we have called on the Ministry to put an end to kiosks, bakeries and fruit shops’ violation of the law as they sell products they are not supposed to,” he said.
Hadjiadamou pointed out these shops not only sold products they should not, such as foodstuffs, but that they also stayed open till as late as 2am.
“We are only responding to the unfair competition that has existed for well over a year. The only solution our members have to survive is to work more hours,” he said.
In an effort to put an end to the long-standing problem, AKEL deputy Nicos Katsourides said his party was proposing to new legislation with stricter punishments for those who violated closing hours.
“The law states that on Wednesday and Saturday afternoon shops are to remain closed, irrespective of the financial and social standing of their owners. The state needs to take measures and measures mean implementing the law, intervening, so as not to operate arbitrarily.”
However, Hadjiadamou reminded it had been the Hypermarkets Association that had first suggested reviewing the current legislation on shop closing hours, but that nothing had materialised.
“We put forward proposals that said fines should be increased to £4,000-£5,000, inspections should be increased and shops that violate the law should be closed down,” he said.
