School bus services in the north will be halted from Wednesday, Turkish Cypriot bus operators’ association Kar-Is chairman Fuat Topaloglu announced on Tuesday, saying they have not been paid for four months.

“We are suspending school bus services from tomorrow. The government is responsible for this,” he said, adding that the decision was made “out of necessity” due to the missed payments.

He also addressed parents of schoolchildren directly, saying, “mothers and fathers; this government, which does not give labour its just desserts, is the one which is making victims out of your children”, before turning his attention to the north’s ruling coalition.

“We are not going to deal with the lies of Finance Minister Ozdemir Berova in particular, nor those of the government in general,” he said.

A day earlier, he had said that “for four months, they have not paid us a single kurus”, and that both the owners of the bus operating companies and the bus drivers themselves are “exhausted”.

He had then accused Berova of “trying to deceive the sector with lies” and described the missed payments as “a clear failure of governance”.

The kurus is the subunit of the Turkish Lira. One kurus is equal to around a fiftieth of a cent.

The Cyprus Mail has contacted Ozdemir Berova and is awaiting a response.