Without funds there will be no development of culture

Statements by AKEL MP Christos Christofides after the meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Education and Culture

10 November 2021

We continued today in the Committee on Education the discussion on the bill to establish a Deputy Ministry of Culture. All the organised groups/bodies dealing with Archaeology in Cyprus that for various reasons the Department of Antiquities must remain where it is, the way it is and continue its work in an enhanced way. The University of Cyprus, the Archaeological Research Unit, the Cyprus Association of Archaeologists and many other institutions and organised groups have taken this position too.

AKEL believes that Parliament needs to listen to both the experts, but also to those who have day-to-day experience of the work being carried out in Cyprus in relation to our antiquities.

At the same time, we are waiting to see what new rules, as we have been told, will be made in the bill on the Cyprus Theatre Organisation and theatre development.

Once again we have concluded that an organisational chart is needed for the Deputy Ministry of Culture’s functioning. We cannot create a Deputy Ministry and subsequently see how things will work out, with which guidelines, services and structures it will operate. This approach in our view is completely wrong.

In conclusion, I stress again that even if the best new structure is established in culture, if the corresponding funding is not provided for something considered as of secondary importance, namely culture, we will not have cultural development. The Education Ministry and government cannot bring a bill for a State Ministry of Culture and tell us that it will be fiscally neutral, that is to say, it won’t allocate and give a single cent more for culture.