The Ministry of Interior, with its urgent confidential letter to the mayors of Strovolos, Larnaca, Paphos and Paralimni, calls on them to check the six funeral offices recently located by the Police (18/2/2022) to operate without the required permits and to proceed all appropriate action against the wrongdoers. To the recipients of the letter, dated 23/2/2022, the Deputy Governor of Nicosia, the director of the Department of Urban Planning and the Chief of Police.
The Ministry of Interior addressed the four mentioned mayors as they also act as urban planning & # 8211; building principles. Indicating the following: “You are summoned under the powers given to you by the Planning and Spatial Planning Law of 1972 and the Law on the Regulation of Roads and Buildings to inspect these premises and in particular whether the relevant permits have been issued (planning and for their function as funeral homes and otherwise, take all appropriate action provided by the aforementioned laws against the offenders. “
It should be noted that, in a letter to the Attorney General Mr. George Savvidis on 8/3/2022, the funeral home association, whose members are also the licensed owners of funeral homes, complained that since 2016 when the text legislation to date, the six reported funeral homes are operating illegally. Stigmatizing, at the same time, the attitude of the competent state services that did not take care of the issuance of court decrees that prohibit the operation of these funeral offices if they are illegal.
They are not dissuasive
According to the Ministry of Interior in its letter to the four mayors, despite the fact that the Police has proceeded to obtain investigative material for the purpose of criminal prosecution of the offenders, however, as it was found, they are still operating illegally. This is a fact attributed by the Ministry of Interior, on the one hand to the time-consuming process of criminal cases before justice and on the other hand to the sentences that are not deterrents.
Specifically, and in particular Article 30, provides that any person who operates a funeral home without the required license or with fraudulent representation seeks to obtain a funeral home license or intentionally poses as a registered funeral director and provides funeral services within a non-licensed he is guilty of an offense and, if convicted, is subject to imprisonment not exceeding one year or a fine not exceeding € 5,000 or both.
