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MOTORISTS snaked in long queues at petrol stations across the island last night ahead of today’s indefinite strike by petrol station owners demanding a freeze in new licences until new legislation is implemented to regulate the market.
The operators’ association said it was left with no other choice after numerous discussions with authorities yielded no results. The association argued it was promised by the government that stricter restrictions on acquiring new licences would be introduced so as not to flood the market, but that these have not been implemented.
PETROL station operators called an indefinite strike from midnight in an attempt to prevent the licensing of new stations. The measure was implemented in the Famagusta district from Wednesday, with operators protesting against the opening of another station, and was extended to the whole country from today.
THIS YEAR will be full of challenges, Central Bank Governor Panicos Demetriades said yesterday, with the need to successfully implement the bailout adjustment programme taking centre stage.
Successful implementation of the adjustment programme would secure the stability of the island’s banking system, which is currently going through severe turbulence due to its exposure to Greece, the governor said.
“Our aim is for a banking system based on solid foundations,” Demetriades told reporters.
Demetriades, who took over at the helm of the Central Bank early last year, struck a note of optimism about the future of the sector.
OPPOSITION parties DISY and DIKO yesterday called for an emergency meeting of the House Finance Committee to discuss ways of keeping the island’s debt sustainable and avoid additional austerity.
The two parties, which support the candidacy of DISY chief Nicos Anastassiades in February’s presidential poll, said joint action was necessary to reverse the situation and create prospects for the Cypriot economy.
“If together we succeed in keeping the public debt at sustainable levels, then we will avoid taking additional painful measures and at the same time create better conditions for a faster recovery of the economy,” said Anastassiades’ spokesman Tasos Mitsopoulos.
VARIOUS sectors of the public service are still trying to work out the kinks in the new working hours that were agreed under the bailout terms with international lenders.
State services are serving the public for longer following extended working hours, which came into effect on Wednesday, the public administration and personnel department has said.
Civil servants – but not shift workers – can start work at any point between 7.30am and 8.30am and leave between 3pm and 4pm as a transition. From September 1, employees will come in between 8am and 9am, leaving between 3.30pm and 4.30pm.
They will no longer work Wednesday afternoons to serve the public, spreading out that time over the week instead.
DESPITE many shops having started their sales before Christmas, the Pancyprian Association of Clothing and Footwear a member of the small shopkeepers union POVEK, announced that the official winter sales period began yesterday.
“The sales are just the continued reduction in prices, a phenomenon, which has been recorded by the commerce ministry over the last three years,” a statement from POVEK said.
“Our aim is for all the consumers to be given the opportunity to buy cheaper goods so small family businesses and the marketplace in general can be revitalised,” it added.
CYPRUS beat out Britain and France, coming in 23rd place in a list of 80 countries ranked according to whether they were a good place for a child to be born in 2013.
The ‘where-to-be-born ‘index was first compiled a quarter of a century ago by the Economist Intelligence Unit as a light-hearted project but it says it has now earnestly calculated where would be best to be born in 2013.
The quality-of-life index links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys – how happy people say they are -to objective determinants of the quality of life across countries.
POLICE investigations continued yesterday into the murder of 34-year-old Yiannakis Christodoulou on New Year’s Day with no sign of the two culprits who sped away from the scene.
Christodoulou, aka ‘Foxy’ was stabbed five times, four in the front and once in the back as he scuffled with two men on January 1 in a residential area of Polemidia in Limassol after they had initially cut him off in their car.
The investigations are focusing on genetic material found at the scene and also the victim’s phone records according to Limassol CID chief Yiannis Soteriades.
“We are examining all the evidence as we continue to question people in an attempt to speedily investigate the case,” he said.
A RECENTLY deceased Cypriot organ donor saved two Cypriot kidney patients, one aged around 40 and the other around 50.
Nicosia General Hospital expressed their gratitude to the deceased’s family in an announcement yesterday.
“Every post-mortem donor can give life to up to eight fellow human beings,” the announcement said.
The transplant clinic at Nicosia general hospital performed two successful transplants on the latest two Cypriot kidney recipients.
The clinic has performed 56 transplants since its opening two years ago in January 2011, with 100 per cent patient and organ viability within a year of the operation.
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.
