Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Initial police investigation

I love Cyprus Mail dearly, and I do feel for the man in this report:

A CAR belonging to a 35-year-old man in Limassol was torched early yesterday morning, police said. The fire began at 2.30am while the car was parked outside the man’s house. Initial police investigations indicate it is a case of arson. The car was extensively damaged.

But you have to admit it that it’s not the best writing ever.  Once I read it out loud in the office, my co-workers helped out with a few other reports along the same lines.  For example:

A pedestrian was ran over by a car yesterday night in Nicosia.  The driver took off and is being looked for.  The early police report suggests it was a case of hit-and-run.

Or, this one:

A few masked man entered the branch of Hellenic Bank in Aradipou village yesterday.  They were armed with a rifle and a pistol and demanded to give them money.  A few minutes later they took off in what appeared to be a stolen vehicle, carrying over 50,000 EUR with them.  An early police report suggests it was a case of bank robbery.

Crime is not a laughing matter, but the reporting of one can sometimes bring a smile.

Work permits moratorium

In the last couple of years, the situation with work permits has been degrading rapidly.  Now, Cyprus News reports, it might get even worse:

LABOUR Minister Sotiroulla Charalambous yesterday proposed a moratorium on work permits for third country nationals employed in certain sectors in a bid to tackle unemployment among Cypriots and other EU citizens.

“It is a decision, which we view necessary under the current circumstances, with unemployment increasing and the availability of a satisfactory number of jobless capable local and community personnel to cover these needs,” Charalambous said after a meeting of the national employment committee.

The moratorium concerns bread production, confectioners, wholesale trade, printers, cheese makers, the dairy industry and other – unspecified — sectors of the economy.

I do understand and fully support the necessity to protect Cyprus citizens from unemployment.  However, what usually happens in practice is not the same thing.  In practice, those businesses that rely on foreign workers (native speakers, etc) or on workers with specific expertise, find themselves in the position of not being able to hire foreigners.  That, in turn, can’t be too good for the economy either.

Beware of religious scammers

Cyprus Mail reports:

POLICE YESTERDAY warned members of the public to be wary of scam artists posing as religious or charitable groups.

According to police, a group of people are going around pretending to members of a church committee or charity selling pictures of negligible value for €50 or more.

Their target market is elderly people who often get duped into buying the pictures, said police.

The public is asked to be particularly careful and to report any suspicious incident to their nearest police station or the Citizen’s Hotline on 1460.

This assumes that religious and charitable groups aren’t scamming people out of money.  And I, personally, find that debatable.