The interior ministry on Monday said that it has taken them two years to get the approval for hiring hourly workers at the checkpoints, condemning an article over the weekend that said the process was being done ‘expressly’ ahead of elections.

According to the article published in daily Politis, the manipulations of the ministry by personnel of the civil registry and migration department were creating a climate of suspicion over them trying to hire hourly wage earners to staff the checkpoints ahead of elections in February.

The article said that sources at the interior ministry pointed to the involvement of department director Maria Adamidou, who is the niece of President Nicos Anastasiades’ wife Andri, and has recently assumed her duties at the department. The paper claimed she was behind the staff being hired and that it was for election purposes.

In their response the ministry said that the article was false, as the issue of hiring hourly wage earners at the checkpoints with the north had been raised in 2020.

They said that the request for hiring these employees to adequately staff the checkpoints was not made now, but in January 2020 by the previous director of the civil registry and migration department, who filed the request to the finance ministry.

“The purpose and objective to address the problem of understaffing at the 12 checkpoints arising from the rest and sick leaves that the permanent staff are entitled to receive. Due to the strict economic policy of the finance ministry, it took time-consuming consultations until the request to hire 42 and not 25 hourly workers were approved on 23 June 2022,” the ministry said.

The ministry said that in the time since the initial request had been filed due to insufficient staffing, they were forced to temporarily close the Dherynia checkpoint twice.

Meanwhile after the request had been filed, the state workers’ union, Pasydy failed to agree with the position of the ministry, and said they prefer to maintain the current regime where permanent staff are paid overtime in place.

“Both the ministries of interior and finance do not agree with this position, since in addition to the increased expenditure there is also the issue of employee productivity, who today work overtime until midnight, and at 7:30 am the next day they have to be back in their offices,” the announcement said.

The ministry added that the reason there will be 25 hires now, even though they have received approval for 42, is because the ministry accepted one of the requests of Pasydy for a limited number of hourly wage employees for the first year.

After the finance ministry gave approval for the positions to be opened in October, the department of civil registry and migration requested the labour ministry give them a list of 100 people from unemployed and people earning a guaranteed minimum wage, who expressed an interest in finding a job as an hourly wage earner.

“Despite the delay due to bureaucratic procedures and trade union reservations, the interior ministry considers that all 42 hourly workers should have been recruited already for the reasons mentioned above,” they said.

Commenting on the Politis article about the hiring being rushed, the ministry said that if this lengthy process is considered express by the newspaper, “then we wonder what the vision of our critics for the Cyprus of the future is?”