Serving the Cyprus state

Better salaries, generous pensions and a job for life.

IT’S deeply entrenched in the Cypriot psyche: Get a government job and you are set for life.

No wonder students hold protests when the government decides to raise the retirement age of teachers or cut entry-level salaries.

“You don’t need science to explain this,” said Nicos Peristianis, a sociologist at the University of Nicosia. “It is the benefits government workers have.”

In general, civil servants and workers in the broader public sector – semi-governmental organisations – receive better salaries than the private sector and work for half a day.

Then comes the huge benefit of job security and stability; a government worker must commit a very serious offense to get dismissed.

They also receive a lump sum as a retirement bonus and a generous pension. Some, depending on the posts they served, may receive two or three pensions.

This desire to join the civil service has driven people to use means other than their own merit  to get the job – namely find someone in a position of authority to help them – which in turn has created an industry of clientelism or rusfeti starring the politicians and parties.

This has been going on since the inception of the Republic of Cyprus.

Everyone who is aware of Cypriot reality knows that one can get a job in the civil service depending on who they know. This is not to say that everyone does this and everyone in the civil service has been hired in this way; but even people who deserve the job may resort to it just because if they do not, someone who knows someone will get it instead of them.

 

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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.