JOURNALISTS’ Union head Antonis Makrides yesterday declared it a “sorry state of affairs” after it emerged that Plus TV station had made redundant 44 of its employees, on the grounds that they were changing their schedule and no longer needed them.
A day before the dismissals the station secured the rights to almost the entire programme schedule of Star Greece, allowing them to fill any gaps in TV air time with imported programmes.
“When you decide to make redundant one person it is your obligation to go to the union to discuss the issue, not to suddenly decide to fire 44 people,” said Makrides. “We have people whose wives are pregnant, some are family men with a lot of responsibilities,” he added.
He demands that they either be reinstated or be given what they are owed.
The 44 gathered outside the Labour Ministry yesterday until a meeting with Labour Minister Sotiroulla Charalambous assured that by the beginning of next week a meeting would be set up between those made redundant and their unions and Plus TV.
Makrides also said that another seven people were made redundant in June and had not received what they were owed.
According to Andreas Petrides, head of the Cyprus Radio-Television Authority, now that the digital switchover has been made the licences that the Authority hands out are for restrictions of a station’s programmes and they no longer have strict restrictions over frequency compared to the analog era. “Stations can be thematic or general interest and they can show programmes from other stations as long as they declare it to the Authority,” said Petrides adding that the station had declared themselves as a general interest station with the digital switchover.
However he asserted that he believed the deal made with Star happened so quickly that they had simply not had the chance to inform the Authority.
“The station is licensed to broadcast programmes of general interest and the Athenian station’s programmes are of general interest,” said Petrides, according to Phileleftheros.
“It wouldn’t be wise for the authority to remove their licence just because it heard they had made 44 people redundant,” said Petrides.
Petrides said that they are now waiting for the station to tell them the content of the programmes but they have every right to apply to switch to showing different themed programmes if they so wish.
Plus TV issued an announcement later yesterday citing the economic crisis as the reason for the redundancies,
They hope that the unions and Labour Ministry will respect the fact that they managed to keep the station going under difficult circumstances over the last five years, and that the demand to close the station would hurt the families of the remaining 25 employees.
