Education ministry staff to march on presidential palace

Striking education ministry staff, including those working for its support programmes and as night school instructors, will march on the presidential palace on Thursday to press the government to resolve two outstanding issues. Simultaneous rallies were held in every district on Monday afternoon, organised by trade unions Peo and Sek. The action will culminate at 3pm on November 5 with a large rally outside the finance ministry, followed by a march to the presidential palace. Union representatives rejected claims that the mobilisation was excessive and pointed to the situation workers have faced for five months. The unions said the strike followed “months of efforts, consultations and repeated interventions” without substantial solutions. They are demanding that the government honour its commitments on two points, the first being an income over the summer months for permanent staff, who are left without a salary and without access to unemployment benefit while the programmes are not running. The second is immediate work for colleagues who have served in the programmes for many years and remain unemployed. “It is not possible for workers to remain without income for months,” the unions said in a joint statement. They also asked for the understanding of students taking part in the programmes. Sek official George Konstantinou told the Nicosia rally that workers had been “without any income for five months now”. He said the unions raised the issue in April, when the law regulating employment in the programmes was passed, and asked then that workers keep access to unemployment benefit, which they have had since 2023. Constantinou said that from 2013 to 2023 the workers were employed under an unlawful service-purchasing arrangement that denied them labour benefits and unemployment pay, which they needed to get through the summer when the programmes do not run. Because they are now regarded as indefinite-term staff, he said, the unions asked that the state keep paying them as it pays other education employees, so they can support themselves and their families. “Unfortunately, no decision has been made in this direction to date,” he said.