A very presentable young man.

Byline: Hermes Solomon

HOW WOULD you like a job that offers free private healthcare for you and your immediate family, low interest loans, 40 days a year paid sick leave, six weeks annual holiday, a thirteenth month's salary, a golden handshake of around e1/4100,000 after 30 years of ironclad secure employment, and an annual pension equivalent to a third or more of your last year's pay?

Join the Cyprus Civil Servants' Gold Club: a job for life, where you are expected to work less than half the number of days in any year.

When I last visited my local fruitaria, two unusually tall, presentable and beautiful women of oriental features were at the shop counter trying to communicate with the owner. They were mature students seeking work, odd jobs, part-time cleaning, anything. They spoke in English with no command of Greek. The owner asked me to tell them, that as much as he would have loved to, he could not afford to employ them. He recommended they continue their door-to-door enquiries, saying that something would surely turn up.

An hour later, I went to visit my bedridden aunt. The front door was opened as usual by her Sri Lankan housemaid, Anoulla, who had recently returned from a 15-day stay with her family back home in Candy, her first holiday in six years.

A very presentable young man was sitting in my aunt's reception hall. He got up and was introduced by Anoulla as her nephew, Chandika. He spoke some Greek and passable English. He told me that he was an IT student at Phillip's College, a four-year course, having just completed his first year successfully and now seriously in need of funds to continue his studies.

Did I know of anyone who might employ him on a temporary, regular or part-time basis, gardening, odd jobs, anything? He claimed he was permitted to work a total of 38 hours a week so long as he maintained his studies.

I suggested he advertise his skills in the Cyprus Mail, you know, something like 'IT student seeks part-time employment, conversant with Windows Excel, Powerpoint, etc, ring...' He said that his mobile had just gone on the blink and he couldn't afford to replace it.

I then gave him a 'Norman Tebbit' (Labour Minister under Margaret Thatcher's government): "Get on your bike and search for work." Chandika owns an old bike at least.

Anoulla then asked me if I could find a job for a housemaid who had suddenly lost her Strovolos employer, an 89-year-old lady that was suddenly no more.

I considered setting up an employment agency.

Current state estimates say there are around 180,000 immigrants in the Republic of which 150,000 are registered workers, asylum seekers and people with refugee status (EU and third country nationals) and 30,000 here illegally. If we take into account the current population (around 877,000) the figure roughly represents one in four people. And I doubt that number includes foreign students, who generally seek part-time work to support the cost of their studies.

When the 20,000 litre water storage tanks of our apartment block needed cleaning out, the management company sent along a local plumber, who brought with him two Chinese lads to climb into the empty tanks and scrape up the residual muck.

When the block's trees needed pollarding, the local tree surgeon brought along two Indian lads to clean up the mess and load the branches onto a truck. Furniture removals require hoards of helpers; which tradesman does not possess his lackey -- legally or not?

I know of a civil servant who runs a sideline business in his spare time -- employing immigrant labour to offload containers for manufacturers at an industrial estate. He is reputed to pay them less than e1/44 an hour. Several of the manufacturers further exploit this labour facility in their factories when overly busy.

It's not so much a cartel as a silent conspiracy; cheap labour being undeniably attractive in these increasingly competitive times.

If our Labour Minister Sotiroulla Charalambou thinks she can keep down unemployment by subsidising employers to take on workers for a minimum of six months, she's dreaming. Why employ anyone at the legally permitted minimum wage when immigrants will work willingly for next to nothing and their employers bypasses all state charges?

A much wiser solution would be for Sylikiotis to announce an amnesty, register the lot of them as part of the labour force and distribute them evenly among the menial task labour market. But we must first install far tighter border controls and have a Labour Ministry sufficiently well organised and capable of fairly distributing that labour.

State benefits paid out to the 18,000 registered unemployed this year exceed e1/4370 million so far. We know there are fewer nice jobs available in these hard times, but we also know that our average Cypriot will refuse to entertain a job that he/she regards beneath him/her, ergo this unstoppable demand by most employers for immigrant labour -- legal or not!

Cyprus, in competition with Malta and Bulgaria, seeks to be chosen as the EU Centre for Immigrant Registration. Really!? My wife, three months after application, is still awaiting renewal of her Temporary Residence Permit never mind her legal entitlement to Cyprus citizenship applied for over a year ago! We cannot cross the Green Line without one or the other...

Oh, for outsourcing and the closing down of inefficient government departments. Should that ever happen, civil servants might finally be obliged to compete with a buzzing and hungry private sector in an effort to keep their jobs, or at least tighten their belts in line with the rest of us.

Had this been France in 1789, we would have dispatched this nouvelle aristocracy to the guillotine.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2009

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