Labour Minister Yiannis Panagiotou aims to build bridges between employers and trade unions today concerning the employment strategy for workers from third countries, a topic that continues to provoke reactions from both sides.
While employers’ organisations insist on further simplification of procedures for hiring foreign personnel, as the lack of human resources remains and is expected to worsen during the summer period, trade unions demand stricter criteria for issuing permits and the re-establishment of technical advisory committees that operated in the past.
In order to achieve a balance on the issue, the minister is expected to present a proposal today to upgrade the role of the tripartite monitoring committee for the implementation of the new strategy, which was decided by the previous government.
At the same time, he is expected to inform both sides about the actions of the Ministry of Labour to ensure sufficient staffing of the labour market, but not at the expense of local staff or their rights.
Regarding the latter, the Ministry of Labour is expected to reiterate its intention to even revoke permits for hiring foreign personnel if it is found that businesses or individual employers do not rehire local seasonal staff, replacing them with foreigners, especially in the hotel industry.
Sources from the Ministry of Labour made it clear yesterday that this specific message should be taken seriously, as the ministry can identify such cases even through personal interviews with Cypriots who worked last year for a specific employer and who this year will either not be preferred or will change employers.
Moreover, the same sources did not rule out that in cases where it is found that local staff, especially seasonal ones, are not preferred and foreigners are hired in their place, not only will the permits of foreigners be revoked, but also the specific employer will be penalised.
The ultimate goal of the Ministry of Labour is its intention to operate as a deterrent to the abuse of the foreign personnel licensing process.
“Under no circumstances do we want the economy to grow, jobs to increase, and unemployment in the country not to decrease,” sources close to the Ministry of Labour stated yesterday, reassuring at the same time that the economy will not be allowed to operate without the necessary staffing and that such cases, i.e., replacement of local seasonal staff with foreigners, have not been reported so far.
As for the sufficient staffing of the labour market, as Labour Minister Giannis Panagiotou stated just this Tuesday, measures are being taken.
These include, among other things, the fact that there has been a 60% acceleration in the examination of employers’ requests for work permits for third-country nationals that historically had delays of several months.
It was also noted that to address the lack of human resources in businesses, priority will be given to activating the unemployed – based on incentive plans that have already been announced – and utilising students from third countries who are already in the country, for which a relevant decree is expected to be issued soon.
