AKEL proposes concrete immediate measures to reduce income inequality

Statement by Andros Kyprianou, AKEL General Secretary

AKEL C.C Press Office, 7^th May 2016, Nicosia 

One of the most dramatic results of the Anastasiades-DISY government policies is that they have turned Cypriot society into one of the most unequal in Europe. In actual fact, we have the highest percentage increase in the gap between the handful of rich and all the rest of the people. 90% of Cypriot citizens have seen their incomes being drastically reduced, while the richest 10% have seen their own grow. In short, in the three years of the government of Mr. Anastasiades and DISY party President Averof Neophytou, the rich have got richer and the poor poorer. There can be no stable economic recovery without reducing economic inequality.

Inequality damages the economy. It restricts the purchasing power of the middle strata and working classes. Growing inequality hurts society. It generates uncertainty and anxiety. It destroys society’s social fabric and squeezes the middle strata.

Working people, women, the unemployed, pensioners, farmers, young people, large families, single parents, people with disabilities and vulnerable groups of the population are all victims of the policies being imposed. That is to say, all of those people whom Mr. Anastasiades had during the presidential elections pledged to protect.

AKEL’s effort is to protect all those in need. That’s where all our proposals, positions and initiatives aim at. There are ways to tackle the situation and reduce economic inequality through the redistribution of national wealth. I stress this because every time AKEL proposes a measure in this direction the government and DISY are up in arms arguing that our policies will destroy the country’s economy. However, when it comes to their own policies that protect the banks or the privileged and select few then everything is fine and convenient. Everything can be arranged to serve their interests.

AKEL proposes and supports policies that benefit the majority of the people and not the privileged elite. It proposes concrete measures; measures for specific groups of the population aiming at combating poverty and inequality. These concrete measures can be implemented without delay.

They include measures to protect working people’s incomes:

• Establishment of binding basic terms of employment; terms such as wages/salaries, fixed holidays, the way overtime employment is compensated, 13th month salary.
• An end to converting salaried and waged workers into self-employable persons. Regulation through legislation of paid employment.

Measures to support vulnerable groups of the population:

• Changes in the income criteria for allocating child benefit and the student grant in relation to the increase for dependent children so that the number of children is taken into account.
• Elaboration of a special scheme to provide economic assistance for low income and unemployed young couples who want to start a family, a scheme that will provide rent subsidies, the purchase of household goods and others.

Revision of the Law on the Guaranteed Minimum Income as follows:

• Review of the method of calculating the care of elderly people.

Specific policies providing financial support for disabled people should be exempted from the so-called Guaranteed Minimum Income and regulated in a different Law.

• Arrangement for those single parents who do not proceed to the issuing of a divorce for objective reasons and limitation in the calculation of the alimony as an income.
• Substantial increase in the amount of immovable property that will not be taken into account as far as the long-term unemployed are concerned.

We do not remember these proposals now that we have elections. I say this because certain circles and forces have all of a sudden remembered to portray an image supposedly promoting people’s interests to society, at the same as they were voting for a whole series of anti-social measures against the peoples interests in the House of Representatives.

As AKEL, we have tabled during the past five-year term of the House of Representatives specific proposals/Bills to protect working people and vulnerable groups of the population. I recall some of the most important:

• Proposal for equal and decent treatment of workers by employers through collective agreements.
• Proposal to ensure the protection of workers who are absent from their work for a long time due to severe illness and to prevent their unlawful dismissal. I regret to point out that while this proposal had been approved unanimously by the House, President Anastasiades has been referring laws to the Supreme Court.
• Proposals to protect the primary family home and small business premises and to protect loans of up to 350 thousand Euros which again concern primary homes and small business premises so that it won’t be possible for them to be sold off to foreign investment funds.
• Proposal to protect property buyers from insolvent land developers.
• Proposal to amend the legislation concerning the taxation of immovable property. This tax must be imposed progressively, exempting small properties (30,000 on 1980 prices as the legislation today stipulates), as well as exempting agricultural land of equal value. AKEL reiterated this proposal in the plenary of the House of Representatives, but unfortunately without the other political forces supporting it.
• Proposals to amend the legislation on the child benefit and Guaranteed Minimum Income.