Karpaz village left with no mayor, councillors
THE acting mayor of Yenierenköy and its 10 municipal councillors were forced to resign this week, leaving the Karpaz village without a local administration, in the latest chapter of a long-running financial crisis that has seen staff go without pay for five months.
Mehmet Kadı symbolically handed over the key and notice that he and his councillors were standing down to Türel Öksüzoğlu, head of local administrations at the Interior Ministry, on Wednesday.
The move came amid anger among council workers over a crisis meeting at which redundancies or sending staff on unpaid leave were mooted to help the council out of the financial doldrums.
Cyprus Today reported last week that staff had launched a “go-slow” protest over non-payment of wages over the last five months, including the bonus “13th salary” — the second such industrial action at the authority in a year.
A controversial meeting at municipality premises on Tuesday night, also attended by 12 local village muhtars, discussed possible ways out of the crisis while workers waited anxiously outside for news.
There were tense scenes as word filtered out that proposals included the possibility of letting some staff to go or ask them to take unpaid leave for six months. An ambulance was called when a number of staff fell ill on hearing of the suggestions.
Others vented their anger and frustration by raiding the council offices to demand resignations, and Mr Kadı later announced the decision to do so, saying: “Some council workers haven’t been able to put bread on the table for the last six months. The children of some cannot continue their schooling. Some have health problems. We wish better days for [them].”
Speaking further on Wednesday, Mr Kadı said they had taken the decision after council staff had “appeared in the doorway [of the meeting] and threatened that if we didn’t resign, they would take over”.
He said the municipality had a “chronic financial problem which is beyond our capacity to solve [and] needs to be addressed by the Interior Ministry”.
Claiming to have quadrupled local revenue from 50,000TL to 200,000TL a month since taking over 16 months ago, he said: “The council receives 417,000TL as a monthly contribution from the government but we only have 42,000TL left after paying outstanding debts . . . and monthly salaries for 112 workers come to 400,000TL.”
Mr Kadı added that, before taking up his role, he had thought the municipality’s problems were only financial, “but then I saw that personnel were not doing their jobs properly”. “Almost all workers have a second job, and muhtars and community leaders have been doing their work as a hobby.”
Mrs Öksüzoğlu said Interior Minister Ayşegül Baybars Kadri did not believe the resignations solved the problem and she would be tackling it once the government obtained its vote of confidence in Parliament — passed on Thursday.
Municipality Workers’ Union (BES) chairman Mustafa Yalınkaya said the situation was “embarrassing” and “problems at the municipality have been neglected for years”.