CIVIL REGISTRY and Migration Director Anny Shakalli has been stripped of her authority to order deportations, Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis said yesterday.
The minister said Shakalli’s duties would continue as normal with the only difference that any deportations first had to be approved by either Permanent Secretary Lazaros Savvides or himself.
Sylikiotis added that an independent official had also been appointed to determine to what extent the migration director had been guilty of any omissions in her handling of long-term third country residents’ right to apply for EU resident status following his repeated instructions not to deport long-term third country nationals,
“We were a year late in implementing the directive and in the past four months it still wasn’t being enforced. The investigator is examining to what extent this law was violated following repeated complaints that it was,” he told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
Sylikiotis was referring to an EU directive that grants third country nationals EU residency status after legally living and working within the EU for a period of five years. The status effectively gives immigrants equal rights and access to benefits as EU nationals.
The minister said it would still be several months before the investigator had completed his report into the department’s handling of residency applications.
Shakalli’s powers were recalled after she had repeatedly come under fire for issuing unwarranted deportation orders. Her treatment of third country nationals has also been criticised as arbitrary, racist, and inhumane.
Sylikiotis added that the recall of other powers assigned to Shakalli was still under discussion.
Asked whether Shakalli had disagreed with him over his decision, the minister said it was not in her authority to do so and that by law the Interior Minister was responsible for all migration decisions but bequeathed his authorities to the Civil Registry and Migration department director, which he could then recall.
The minister initially temporarily suspended Shakalli’s deportation orders three weeks ago while on a visit to Germany, only to validate it and launch the investigation upon his return.
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