Ban announced on Vietnamese workers

 

THE government yesterday annouced it was banning the entry of domestic workers from Vietnam with immediate effect following a flurry of asylum applications from current employees from the Asian country whose permits were either close to expiration or had expired.

Authorities had observed in recent months an unusual number of asylum applications from Vietnamese nationals whose time in Cyprus was up, coupled with cases of forged documents.

“There has been a phenomenon of mass asylum applications and because they were not isolated as in other cases, we decided to suspend (entry),” Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis said.

There were also cases of Vietnamese nationals caught with forged documents, the minister said.

The minister said authorities do experience such phenomena from time to time – either domestic workers or students applying for asylum.

“But from Vietnam they were en masse,” Sylikiotis said. “When a phenomenon becomes widespread then we are forced to take measures.”

The minister did not give a specific figure for the applications but he said they may be hundreds.

Sylikiotis stressed however that with the current processing system, the situation will be tackled swiftly.

There are around 36,000 domestic workers in Cyprus, around 11,000 from Vietnam.

 

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