Camps to house construction workers in the north

MASSIVE camps to house 25,000 construction workers in the north are to be built in and around Kyrenia and other major towns where development is taking place, Turkish Cypriot media said yesterday.

According to a report in the English-language weekly Cyprus Times, such is the demand for migrant Turkish construction workers, that other camps are to be built in Famagusta, Morphou, Trikomo and occupied Nicosia.

The majority of the workers are from Turkey and are current living rough on the construction sites or in tents and makeshift shanties. But plans have already been drawn up to build accommodation for them with the approval of the Turkish Cypriot administration, the reports said.

Union director Cafer Gurcafer told the newspaper the aim was for each contracting company to establish its own site on land which will be set aside in the five municipalities.

The accommodation will include modern facilities with sanitation and drinking water. They will also have offices and warehouses and act as maintenance depots for equipment.

“We will complete the infrastructure, such as installing electricity and water, within three months and start building the contractors’ camps in around a year, with completion in two years,” said Gurcafer.

“Once this is done, workers will be banned from sleeping in or around building sites or living rough. It will be the contractor company’s responsibility to ensure that the new facilities are used.”

The Turkish Cypriot ‘Minister of Labour’ Sonay Adem said he supported the plan. “There has been a big improvement in the health conditions of workers’ accommodation when compared with the period when there were no government inspections or investigations,” he said. “But there are still employers who have not taken any action to improve the living and working conditions of their employees. Inspections at night have started to identify these companies.”

Cyprus Today also interviewed some of the workers.

All said they were living on the sites, usually in partially completed villas, in tents or in home-made shacks. “Few had proper sanitation and many had no readily available drinking water,” the paper 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.