Near islandwide bus strike planned for Wednesday called off

A near island-wide bus strike planned for Wednesday has been cancelled, representative of the Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos, Intercity and Famagusta companies Haris Therapis said on Tuesday.

He said after an intervention by Transport Minister Yiannis Karousos, who scheduled meetings with the companies to solve their problems, the companies decided to cancel the strike.

“As a sign of good will and acting with a sense of responsibility, all strike measures are suspended until the completion of the consultations with the minister,” Therapis said.

On Saturday, the employees said they would go on a 24-hour strike on Wednesday across the island, except Nicosia, in protest over the loss of transport contracts.

Previous protests were held by bus companies, one outside the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, over losing their contracts for providing transport.

The five bus companies, along with Nicosia’s Osel, had thus far held the public transport concessions but most of them lost out to MLKP consortium, comprising Malta Lines and Kapnos Airport Shuttle Services. The current contracts, for the 2010-2020 period, are due to expire on July 4. The next ten-year concessions will be valid from July 2020 to July 2030.

The consortium was initially awarded four contracts to operate public transport in Nicosia, Larnaca, Famagusta and the intercity routes but the current holders of these services challenged the validity of the competition, each with court procedures.

The court ruled in favour of MLKP for Larnaca and Nicosia with the company announcing that it will be assuming operations of these bus routes as of July 5.

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