Harsh reality totally dispels government’s “success story”

Statement of Stavros Evagorou, Deputy Parliamentary Leader of AKEL-Left-New Forces

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 17th October 2015, Nicosia

Today is dedicated to the International Day for the eradication of poverty all over the world. At the same time as almost 1 billion of our fellow human beings throughout the world are living in conditions of severe poverty, as tens of thousands of children are dying from hunger, as hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa are living on 1.25 dollars per day, just 1% of the world’s population enjoy 50% of the world’s wealth. At the same time, the richest 10% of the world’s population own 90% of the world’s wealth.

In EU member Cyprus almost 1 in 3 of the population, that is to say roughly 230,000 people are living in conditions of poverty and social exclusion.

Of those, 130,000 of our compatriots are deprived of bare essential goods. In the Cyprus of 2015 the percentage of people suffering from severe material deprivations has increased to 15.3% in 2014 from the 9.1% it was five years ago.

In the Cyprus of 2015, 28% of new graduates want to emigrate; several thousand have already left our country or have simply not returned to their homeland after completing their studies abroad.

Apart from that, apparently Cyprus has entered the markets after a supposedly “remarkable” success story, as the Minister of Finance likes to say.

Let them complement each other on these “results”…