Only a handful of students turned out on Tuesday for a protest called by MEP Fidias Panayiotou against the ban on mobile phones in schools.

Initially slated to begin at 1pm, before schools have finished for the day, the protest was later delayed for an hour to give more students the chance to attend.

The education ministry had warned that those taking time off school to attend would face disciplinary action.

But, Nicosia’s Eleftheria Square remained sparsely populated, with a small number of children in attendance and music playing. Elsewhere, the official tally was given as 36.

Speaking to journalists at the gathering, Panayiotou described the decision to ban mobile phones as “the final straw”.

“I want to link it a little bit to the coronavirus. I will tie it in a bit, we should not be forcing people to get vaccines if they do not want to get them. Just as you want to have a phone at work, so do the children at school. The phone has become an extension of our hand, instead of removing them from schools, we should promote that they be used properly,” he said.

He added, “we have been talking about changes in schools for years, but governments and ministers change and we do nothing.”

School pupils’ coordinating committee Psem had rejected Panayiotou’s call to hold a protest, with its newly formed administrative board saying it will discuss a range of issues which impact pupils, including the ban on mobile phones in schools, at a meeting with Education Minister Athena Michaelidou on November 11.

Panayiotou responded to Psem’s rejection of his protest by saying, “I could not locate them for a meeting because their administrative board was only elected yesterday.”

He added, “I am new in politics and I am trying things, with the aim of change, like this today. It may succeed, it may fail, we may be heard, we may not, but we will continue to make noise.”

He went on to say that Michaelidou “seems to have opened her ears because we did this thing.

“Before, when I spoke to her, her ears were closed. Now, I think her ears are open. I will request a meeting with [her] and [President Nikos Christodoulides],” he said.

Parliament voted last Thursday to approve the government’s move to ban mobile phones in school, with pupils now required to have their mobile phones switched off throughout the school day should they have one on their person.

Michaelidou had said at a House education committee meeting at the end of last month that the use of mobile phones in schools “creates stacks of problems”, adding that break times “create opportunities for children to abuse mobile phones, and that leads to delinquent behaviours”.