Statements by the General Secretary of AKEL A.Kyprianou during his tour in the Famagusta district
AKEL on vaccination program and vaccinations
14th May 2021, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
“I want to express our satisfaction with what we have seen on this spot.
I’d like to make this clear as we have been informed that the vaccination centres here are functioning satisfactorily, adequately responding to the needs that exist for vaccinations. It is important that procedures are made easy for people and that vaccinations can proceed smoothly.
The problem we have identified here in this area is that 5 employees of the Ministry of Health are unpaid at least for their overtime work since last December, which is unacceptable when they are required to work from morning till late at night, to work on Saturdays and now there is even demand that they should work on Sundays too.
Workers must be paid regularly on time. It is unacceptable that they have been unpaid for five months, have even been unpaid for services they have provided since last year in March 2020. In contrast, the state health services (OKYPY) pays the executives it has here in this place to serve the people.
Now in general as far as the vaccination program is concerned, I consider that it is now moving at a faster pace and this is a positive development, coupled with the improvement in weather conditions. I hope and wish that this will help in dealing more effectively with the pandemic.
Of course, the latest positive developments cannot erase first and foremost the enormous trouble and inconvenience people are undergoing with rapid tests as a result of the endless queues in adverse conditions to go through the time-consuming procedure of rapid tests. The second thing I would like to say is that there was a delay in starting vaccinations at a faster pace. We do not accept the Health Ministry’s argument that “you know, the EU has distributed the number of vaccines proportionally and that we are moving at the same pace”.
There are countries such as Malta, for example, which has vaccinated 80% of its population, Hungary, which has a much larger population than us, but has vaccinated 78% of its own population. We believe that the possibility existed to do so and we did not use this possibility as much as we should have.
And finally as regards vaccinations, I want to say the following. No one can impose on those people who don’t want to be vaccinated by force. If we want to convince these people we must give them an incentive and not to indirectly exert pressure or blackmail them to proceed with the vaccination program.
AKEL’s appeal to the Ministry of Health is to think of ways in which people could be motivated and convinced that it would be in their own interest to be vaccinated and not indirectly – I repeat – to put pressure on them.”
