Air traffic controllers stage two-hour strike

AIR traffic controllers at the island’s two airports yesterday staged an impromptu two-hour strike to protest against the criminal prosecution of a colleague accused of not complying with security personnel instructions.

Air traffic personnel undergo strict security checks at the airports before entering their workplace.

The checks are often very stringent and “sometimes humiliating”, the controllers said in a written statement.

“Colleagues are forced to pass through the metal detector two and three times when the relevant European Union directive allows for alternating body searches,” the statement said.

The controllers said they protested against the situation repeatedly but to no avail.

But they ran out of patience when a colleague was charged when he “omitted to comply with a police officer’s instruction during his entry into the workplace,” the controllers said without elaborating.

The charge has nothing to do with reality, the statement added.

The air traffic controllers expressed their full support to their colleague and urged officials to act to stop the prosecution.

The strike affected five flights.

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.