Working people’s rights and interests are ensured by maintaining the Semi-governmental organization’s public character

Statement of George Loucaides AKEL C.C. Spokesperson

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 25th August 2015, Nicosia

 

The Anastasiades Government and the governing DISY party are called upon to answer pressing questions that naturally arise in connection with their plans and scheming to privatize the profitable Semi-governmental organizations and in particular, the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CYTA).

When did the Government and DISY discover that privatizations are supposedly necessary and beneficial to the reform of the Cyprus economy and not a question of the money demanded by the Memorandum?

– Should we as a consequence comprehend that they admit that they lied to citizens and working people when during the presidential pre-election campaign they made a pledge in writing and verbally that they would not proceed to privatizations?

– How exactly and in what way will the Cyprus economy benefit from the privatization of the profitable Semi-governmental organizations?

– How will the privatization of the profits of hundreds of millions of Euros annually benefit citizens, indeed when at the same time the socialization of the losses of the private banks is continuing?

– How will the government effectively protect consumers from the cartel that has also been set up in telecommunications, so that private investors will further increase their profits to which CYTA will be surrendered; Will it perhaps be done in the same way the cartel in the petroleum import companies and in a number of other sectors of the economy is treated today?

– How will the taxpayer be supported after the loss of hundreds of millions of Euros the profitable Semi-governmental organizations contribute to the state in the form of dividends?

– Will new taxes perhaps need to be imposed in order to cover the loss?

– How will the widespread tax evasion and exemption given by private investors – to whom the profitable organizations of the public sector will be surrendered – be combated? Will this be done through new taxes on working people’s salaries?

– In addition, does it or does it not represent a great provocation and a scandal, that taxpayers have already paid € 41 million in advance to the future private investor in the ports, in order to hand over to this private investor a clean sheet so that he/she can further increase profitability? Is this perhaps the plan of the government and DISY party for CYTA? Are they going to burden taxpayers with an annual cost of tens of millions of Euros for transferring CYTA’s employees to the public sector, without them having duties and responsibilities?

– How will the country’s economy be served when the increased profits of private investors will either leave Cyprus or will be growing in bank accounts without being injected into the real economy in the form of government revenues, consumption and investments?

– How will the sensitive national security issues of a semi-occupied country be safeguarded, as they have been officially set out by the competent bodies and services?

The questions do not end here. The answers however are obvious for those who do not serve dogmatic obsessions and big private interests.

Working people’s rights in the Semi-governmental organizations, the interests of consumer citizens, the interests of taxpayers, the economy and semi-occupied Cyprus are best guaranteed by maintaining the public character of the Semi-governmental organizations and their further modernization.

Towards this end, AKEL addresses again an appeal to the opposition parties to act together, without hesitations and ulterior motives and mainly to refuse the conversion of the opposition parties into an advocate of the government’s and ruling force’s anti-social policy and neoliberal absurdity.