Health fears raised as no end in sight for school cleaners’ strike
FEARS have been raised that state schools could turn into a “breeding ground” for disease due to an ongoing strike by some school cleaners.
More than 200 cleaners who have become members of the Kamu-İş trade union have been on strike since September.
The cleaners, who are employed by a private company that has a contract with the state to provide cleaning services, claim they have not been paid and that their rights as workers are being violated.
The insufficient cleaning services at state primary and secondary schools have led to scenes of overflowing bins and dirty classrooms and toilets.
There are even reports of parents of children at some schools taking matters into their own hands by helping out with the cleaning themselves, while some are refusing to send their offspring to school.
The situation has lead to calls from the Cyprus Turkish Medical Association (KTTB) for the Health Ministry, National Education Ministry and municipalities to take action to ensure that minimum hygiene conditions at schools are being met.
A written statement from the KTTB noted that schools are “gradually moving away from healthy and sustainable education conditions”
and expressed concerns that this may cause them to become “breeding grounds for new disease outbreaks”.
The statement said: “We call on the Health Ministry’s Basic Healthcare Services Department to fulfil its duty to inspect the health conditions at schools as soon as possible.
“We also call on the National Education Ministry to urgently take the necessary steps so that children can continue their education in a healthy environment. . . We are sad to see that there has been no response to the justified protests [by cleaners] that took
place for weeks and that a consensus [to resolve the matter] has not been reached.”
The KTTB warned that the main cause of illnesses such as amoebic dysentery, bacillary dysentery, typhoid fever, hepatitis A and common viral diarrhoeas, such as enteroviruses and rotaviruses, is “poor hygiene conditions”.
Their statement continued: “Because these diseases can progress with severe complications, especially in the paediatric age group, toilet and hand hygiene should be fully implemented.
“In addition, it is known that respiratory viruses such as Covid19, influenza (for example, swine flu) and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) increase during this season and can be transmitted more rapidly under poor hygiene conditions.”
Meanwhile the general secretary of the Cyprus Turkish Teachers Union (KTÖS), Burak
Maviş, has warned that the union will take the rubbish from schools and “dump it in front of” the National Education Ministry offices if the problem is not resolved soon.
Mr Maviş made the comments to the press on Wednesday outside one of the worst-affected schools, the Arabahmet Primary School in Lefkoşa’s walled city.