THE CYPRUS Hypermarket Association yesterday confirmed that the majority of hypermarkets which had violated their closing hours at the weekend had been fined.
Fifty hypermarkets, including Demos, E&S, Papantoniou, Chris Cash & Carry, Orphanides, Olympic, Sarris and SYK Anemos hypermarkets, stayed open from 7am to 7pm on Saturday and from 9am to 3pm on Sunday.
But despite the threats of hefty fines from police, the hypermarkets were only fined £50 each.
The decision to stay open was part of a wider campaign which started last week, with hypermarkets threatening to change their status to that of kiosks, which have far more flexible opening hours, and a number of them putting up ‘kiosk’ banners across their premises.
The supermarkets are angry kiosks and bakeries are allowed to break the law on what goods they can sell, often turning into mini-supermarkets without the accompanying restraint on opening hours. The association is also tired of the Labour Ministry’s failure to uphold its assurances that it will put forward an amended bill to modernise the current law, extending hypermarket opening times.
“This was our first step in our reaction towards the government’s failure to do anything,” said Andreas Hadjiadamou, the association’s Executive Secretary. “More measures will be decided by the association’s board members at a meeting at 9am on Wednesday.”
Hadjiadamou was not willing to disclose what those measures would involve.
“The board will meet and decide what needs to be done from here. At the moment the same 50 hypermarkets – and possibly several more – will open up on Wednesday afternoon when they are supposed to be closed.”
Hadjiadamou claimed police were not being even-handed in their application of the law.
Between January 1 and December 5, a total of 918 businesses have been reported for not closing on time. These include 194 hypermarkets, 476 shops, 141 kiosks and 107 bakeries.
Hadjiadamou said: “More hypermarkets than kiosks were fined. This is not proportionate to the number of kiosks that exist and flaunt the law. Also kiosks were only fined for violating closing times but there is no mention of them selling products that they are not allowed to and should have been fined for. As we have said before, if kiosks, bakeries and fruit shops want to sell products only allowed to be found in hypermarkets, supermarkets and grocers then they should close at the same times and not be allowed to stay open till the times they do.”
Although the association had not yet officially heard from the Labour Ministry, Hadjiadamou said word had it that the Cabinet would be reviewing the bill over the next few days.
He said: “We heard the law will go to the Cabinet and then to the House for approval before the end of this year… Maybe following the pressure we have exerted the past few days they realised that words were not enough and action was needed.”
He added: “We are now waiting to see what the government’s next move will be to solve this problem and to put some order in retail trade.”
