50,000 children or 28.9% of the relevant population are facing the danger of poverty and social exclusion
Statement by Stavros Evagorou, Member of the Political Bureau of AKEL, Head of the Economic Research Bureau of AKEL
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 17th November 2016, Nicosia
According to figures released by “Eurostat”, in 2015 in the Cyprus of the so-called “Success Story” as the government and ruling forces have called it, 50,000 children, or 28.9% of the relevant population are facing the danger of poverty and social exclusion. The above figure translates into particularly low family incomes and severe material deprivation, together with the simultaneous inability of access to material and social goods.
Unfortunately, the collapse of the economy and the vicious austerity policies which have been imposed by the current government through the Memorandum, which the government itself has termed as its own ideological manifesto, has led to widening income and social inequalities in our country.
Unfortunately behind the government’s notorious ideological manifesto we see hidden human tragedies which it deliberately chooses to ignore.
As AKEL, we urge the government to focus in a targeted way on reducing these huge inequalities and providing substantial support to vulnerable groups of the population, instead of wasteful and provocative job recruitments and promotions that it chooses to make according to its own criteria.
It is time for the government to turn at long last towards growth and the upgrading of the welfare state.
