DEBENHAMS’ stores in Limassol and Ledra Street, Nicosia are planning to install indoor “smoking cafe” areas.
George Aniliades, Managing Director of Ermes which operates 10 Debenhams stores in Cyprus, said yesterday “We respect the law (banning smoking in indoor public spaces) and we respect both our smoking and non smoking customers.”
Asked why the stores were introducing closed-off indoor smoking areas six months after the smoking ban was put in place, Aniliades said “We’re trying to give the option to smoke within the law. Many of our customers are smokers and we are trying to give them the option within the law.”
A major reason for the law, however, he said was to protect non-smoking workers, such as the restaurant manageress at the Olympia Debenhams in Limassol, from second hand smoke while providing staff who smoke with a place to do so.
“We are a serious and very responsible employer. We employ 2,200 staff and what we do is always within the law, and the Health and Safety law.”
Under the ban, smoking is forbidden in all internal public spaces, but is allowed in internal courtyards and external areas that are covered by a canopy, such as the outside of cafés, courtyards of restaurants and the central cafeteria area of the Parliament.
Employers are also obliged to provide a closed smoking area for employees with an appropriate ventilation system, in which exclusive access will be granted to employees who are smokers and who have submitted a written request to be permitted to smoke in that area.
In order to find the legal loophole, Debenhams’ management employed a group of “competent consultants”, who said that they could legally provide a smoking area without infringing the rights of non-smokers, if it was separated from non-smoking areas and well ventilated.
However, Green Party Chairman George Perdikis, who initially tabled the smoking ban in Parliament, said yesterday that there was no such loophole. “Actually my first suggestion was to have separate smoking and non-smoking areas, but then DISY changed it so that smoking was banned in all [internal] areas,” he said.
A senior source within the Shacolas Group, of which Ermes is a subsidiary, confirmed that the plans were going ahead, as did a Nicosia store employee who said that a permit had been granted.
The move has caused outrage among some non smokers. After discovering the new smoking cafe under construction at her local Debenhams in Limassol, Marion Morse told the Cyprus Mail: “It is disgraceful, disgusting and immoral. If they are allowed to do this it will drive a coach and horses through the law.”
Referring to the Limassol store, Morse said “The aim of the law is to protect staff, but they will have to walk through (the smoking area) It cannot be classed as an outside area.”
