Why not let shop owners regulate their own hours?

Your recent report about shopping hours in the Paphos area only serves to highlight the nonsense of declaring certain parts of our island as being so-called tourist areas.

This government intervention in commerce and trade  highlighted by shopping opening and closing hours many of which go back to colonial times is as usual out of step with the rest of Europe.

Surely the whole island should be a an area to attract tourists and thus when shops open and shut should be the prerogative and the choice of the owners based on customer needs. 

As usual, the intervention of the Cyprus government and shop workers union has lost sight of what is now the norm in the rest of Europe where Sunday and 24-hour opening of shops, has increased the number of jobs available for full and part time workers and encouraged trade.

The attitude here is another example of unwarranted intervention instead of creating a free market to encourage trade.
 
John Russell
Limassol

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.