The angry reaction of the driving instructors was brought by the new decision of the Council of Ministers, which gave the green light for new legislation, where for the first time there will be the training schools of driving instructors, in order to provide training and examination to candidate new driving instructors, in in contrast to the practice that was applied until today, where there was no structured training and essentially the exams were conducted by the Department of Road Transport.
Indeed, according to the new decision, there will be an obligation for the lifelong learning of driver instructors at regular intervals through the driver instructor training schools, which are to be created, while at the same time there will be a categorization of instructors and schools according to the knowledge and educational means they have.
Decision, which finds professional driver trainers strongly opposed, with the president of professional trainers, Koko Protopapas, speaking to REPORTER, to raise the gauntlet and emphasize that at the present stage, “there are so many problems in the Driving Schools that they should not even have dealt with these issues. I can tell you with certainty that 2/3 of the instructors are over 40 and 50 years old. Since each of us has an experience of thirty years in this profession, what training can they give us? We will fight this matter in the Parliament and we will also talk to the Minister of Transport, Yannis Karousos, because I see this decision somewhat vindictive towards the trainers and I do not know the reason. Perhaps the minister did not yet realize what work driving instructors offer to society”.
At the same time, Mr. Protopapas wonders “what might have changed in the last decades in the car and that the instructors themselves want additional training?” If we are talking about vehicles that no longer need the driver and go by themselves, then I would agree that this decision is a good innovation. Technology is moving forward, but we are unfortunately going backwards. They can't come to train a 50-year-old instructor, to learn how to work a machine. Somewhere is the purpose of this action that has been decided”.
At the same time, professional trainers agree with the decision to train new trainers so that they can learn specific things. “But no, to come back and say that only the trainers are to blame today. The instructors are clearly doing their job and after all, the final license to each learner driver will be given by the examiner. As soon as the examiner does not give the permission, each trainee will not be able to go out on the road and thus the work of the trainer stops. So, since the examiners have the final say, let the examiners themselves be trained first and then they decide on the trainers”.
However, the problems affecting the driving instructor industry at the present time seem to be quite numerous and, as Mr. Protopapa explained, are more serious. “There are some who are still trying a year and a half later to get a license and they don't succeed because they took the exam twice and got cut and the dates are every six months. This thing can't be done. It's a human right for someone to want to get a license at 18 and it takes a year and a half for a license, for a little mistake he made in the exam. So a key problem is the dates. Second main problem is that they built a program where when five people enter at the same time it bogs down the system and you can't even get an exam date.”
Asked why the trainers believe that this decision is appropriate, Mr. Protopapas referred to the various misdemeanors committed by a certain number of trainers. for the trainers. Okay, we are not all Saints, but in the grass the dry and the green burn, many times. For three people who are all over Cyprus who commit wrongdoing, let the whole industry come and pay for them. We are not responsible as we are purely professionals and we know our job and how to do it”. and old trainers the vehicle terminology we already know? We have been doing this work for a hundred years. All instructors are well equipped in the profession. Some of them are not well equipped and have no job today. An instructor who has two or three students a year definitely has something going on with that person. But a trainer who has a lot of work, then people prefer him, because he has a positive history”.
