It was encouraging to students protesting in London the other day. I was starting to think that university education really was becoming a pointless waste of three years. In the good old days students used to protest regularly. And that was when degrees were supposed to be harder. How did they have the time?
Sylikiotis seeks to calm the storm as Labour Minister scorned by deputies for seeking €30m to cover asylum needs
THE government yesterday sought to play down the immigrant situation as negative public sentiment and hysteria increases over their numbers and the cash needed to support them.
As Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis tried to reassure the public at a news conference yesterday, Labour Minister Sotiroula Charalambous was at parliament asking for €30 million to cover the cost of facilities and benefits for asylum seekers for next year.
EVERY FEW days we hear of some other ingenious way in which members of the Cyprus Republic nomenclature take care of themselves. In the last 10 days or so we have been reading in Politis about the extortionate state pensions paid out to retired top civil servants and ministers. These state pensions are higher than the salaries the majority of people are ever paid in the private sector, without the civil servants contributing a cent towards them.
CYPRUS is becoming ‘a tourist attraction for migrants’, deputies heard yesterday after the Labour Minister said €30 million was needed to assist legal migrants and asylum seekers.
The issue was under discussion yesterday at the House Institutions Committee yesterday, prior to debate over the ministry’s 2011 budget.
Speaking after the meeting, Committee Chairman, EVROKO’s Rikkos Erotokritou, said it was at the very least “provocative” to ask for such massive funds for migrants when the government was baulking when it came to finding €10 million to compensate the employees of failed state-owned Eurocypria Airlines.
ASYLUM seekers, refugees and subsidiary protection beneficiaries are entitled to state benefits – in accordance with the EU – to cover their basic needs and housing.
In 2009, the state paid €15.6 million in benefits and allowances to these groups.
This year’s expenditure was not immediately available.
An asylum seeker receives €452 per month for their basic needs plus a maximum amount of €226 for rent – if the rent is lower then they receive that amount.
At Christmas they are given €452 on top of their monthly allowance plus €110 at Easter.
They also receive around €130 as heating allowance in November.
THE DISCOVERY by the Cypriot Veterinary Services of a resistant genotype for scrapie in sheep has brought praise from the EU, which plans to promote the findings to other member states.
Cypriot scientists are currently in the process of finding a resistant genotype for goats as well and if that is also a success, the European Commission (EC) will promote it to all EU states as a means of combating scrapie completely.
The success has also earned Cyprus a postponement of an EC decision to cull 460,000 goats and sheep between August and December 2012.
FACEBOOK and Twitter could hold the key to luring more Russian tourists to Cyprus, according to a recent study of Russian holidaymaker’s web browsing habits.
The study, conducted by market research firm MASMI, indicates that despite Russian tourist arrivals having already reached 213,682 this year – up from 148,740 in total for 2009 – Cyprus might was still being outperformed by other destinations like Turkey, Egypt and Ukraine when it comes to luring web-savvy social networkers.
After surveying 329 ‘web empowered’ Russians, Cyprus came ninth out of 24 holiday destinations yet it came 23rd in the list of countries they actually visited.
PARLIAMENT yesterday received a bill, which is set to regulate the appointment of stewards at football matches as part of efforts to combat hooliganism.
Speaking after the House Legal Affairs Committee, Committee Chairman, DISY’s Ionas Nicolaou, said the bill was long-awaited.
The bill regulates stewards’ terms of employment, their duties and the institution’s general operations.
PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias was in Bratislava yesterday to meet with his counterpart, Slovakian President Ivan Gasparovic, and sign an agreement on mutual protection of classified information.
Accompanying him on the three day visit, which concludes today, are Minister of Foreign Affairs Marcos Kyprianou, the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, Antonis Paschalides, Government Spokesman Stefanos Stefanou, government officials, and his wife Elsie.
After signing the agreement, the leaders held a joint press conference, at which Christofias spoke of his forthcoming visit to New York to meet UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu on November 18.
BY A close vote, parliament last night passed a law on combating terrorism and defining a terrorist organization.
The bill passed with 22 votes in favour from DISY, DIKO and European Party deputies, while 19 MPs from AKEL and socialists EDEK voted against. The Greens abstained.
The law specifies what constitutes a terrorist group according to the definition and list of terrorist organisations compiled by the European Council. It also stipulates terrorist offences and subsequent penalties.
It defines a terrorist group as “a group of two or more persons which has been established and operates for a specific amount of time with the purpose of committing terrorist acts.”
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.
