Mass illegal employment and undeclared work in the CYPRA abattoir
Statements by Andreas Fakontis, AKEL MP and President of the Parliamentary Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance Committee
24th November 2020 at 11:00, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
The case of the CYPRA abattoir is yet another monumental scandal during the term of the Anastasiades-DISY administration, which sums up numerous cases of business and employer arbitrariness in combination with a huge incompetence, reluctance or/and covering up of labour, environmental and town-planning scandals. Issues relating to government political responsibility also arise, since during their rule the government ruling forces shut down the Kofinou inter-municipal abattoir which they then left unguarded as a result of which it was subsequently looted, thus paving the way for the CYPRA abattoir to gain the dominant and monopoly position in its field. .
The government’s responsibilities for the large scale illegal and undeclared work at the abattoir are irrevocable. For a number of years the specific employer has remained immune since no or almost no effective controls were carried out to crack down on mass illegal employment and undeclared work. No checks were made to verify the poor working and living conditions of the workers. It took the coronavirus pandemic to reveal that this particular employer was illegally employing 50 workers and another 68 undeclared workers, who were staying in illegal premises, with health protocols being disregarded.
No worker bears any responsibility for being employed illegally. The employer bears the sole responsibility, who deliberately chooses to employ workers, mostly immigrant, in a status of illegal and undeclared work, making them more vulnerable to accepting humiliating wages and working conditions.
The following many questions arise:
- What have the relevant Ministries and government agencies been doing for so many years?
- What invisible hand in the higher echelons of the government intervened so that effective measures to stamp out the illegalities and enforce the legislation were not taken?
- Do the laws and procedures of the state perhaps not apply to everyone, but only to a few?
- Why does the government remain silent in the face of this huge scandal?
We expect that all the necessary procedures will be set in motion so that the truth will be revealed to the public and the guilty punished by example.
We have had enough of the ridicule and cover up.
