On Thursday morning, the port workers of the port of Larnaca gathered outside the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works, who since Tuesday have been on indefinite strike with their request to implement the interim solution agreed on October 27 with the Minister of Transport and by which the company withdrew on Monday, according to what was stated by the District Secretary of SEGDAMELIN-PEO Larnaca, Nadia Kyritsi.
The agreement concerns a 50-50 share of port operations between the port workers and the port managers, Kition Ocean Holdings Ltd.
The port workers were met outside the Ministry of Transport by the Director General of the Ministry, Yannis Nicolaidis, who urged them to immediately return to their work and attend a meeting with the Ministers of Labor and Transport on Monday.
After the meeting with the General Manager, the dockworkers will meet at the PEO building in Nicosia, in order to decide their next steps.
“After today's general meeting in the morning at the port of Larnaca and due to the stagnation in the resolution of the issue which has arisen strongly in the last few days and after the company retreated from the agreement, which was reached on October 27 with the Minister of Transport, we were forced to continue the struggle to process and complete the dock workers' work at the pier,” said Ms. Kyritsi.
She also noted that “We believe that this interim agreement, which has been operating for the last 5.5 years in the port of Limassol and was made by the Ministry of Transport in March 2017 to be the solution to solve the same issue in the port of Larnaca and with good will all sides to sit at the dialogue table, if there are different approaches, which there are” .
Ms. Kyritsis concluded that “A request from all of us to think better thoughts for the good of the Cypriot society and the Cypriot economy. The only request that exists on the part of the workers is respect for the agreements, respect for the collective agreement, the labor institutions of Cyprus and labor peace”.
