The role of volunteer firefighters is heading towards institutionalization with a bill being discussed by the Parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee, while the review of the top tier of the judiciary will not come before the plenary session of the House of Representatives next Thursday.
The Chairman of the Committee, Parliamentary Representative of DISY Nikos Tornaritis said in statements after the meeting that the purpose of the bill is "the institutionalization of the voluntary role of citizens in the battlefield essentially, the response to the firestorm: Who are eligible to be volunteer firefighters, where they will belong, what is their training, what are the exams, what is the civil liability, what is the relationship between the employer and the volunteer firefighter, etc."
"We believe that this is a very crucial bill, which will very soon be before the plenary session of the Parliament because unfortunately every year we are confronted as a state with this natural phenomenon, through the climate change that occurs in recent years and brings many disasters, not only in Cyprus, but also in many countries of the Earth," he noted.
AKEL MP Andreas Pasiourtides said on the same issue that the unfortunate experiences of last summer in mountainous Larnaca and Limassol have shown that any assistance in cases of fires and emergency conditions should be necessary and welcome.
"We examined in committee the bill on volunteer firefighters so that the many people who are aware of such cases and want to help and assist can do so in a coordinated manner and with the right training, so that neither they nor others who participate in efforts to extinguish fires or save lives are at risk," he said.
The issue, he added, will be discussed in the next sessions so that it can be brought to the plenary session as soon as possible "because we believe that volunteerism can always contribute to the state and be helpful in situations where hands and humanitarian aid are needed".
Justice reform
On the issue of the review of the Supreme Judicial Council, the President of the Legal Affairs Committee said that AKEL has requested further answers and explanations and for this reason the bill for constitutional amendment will not be brought to the plenary next Thursday before AKEL receives the explanations it wants.
"This is why I hope that everyone will finally be convinced that the time has come to make a breakthrough in the Cypriot justice system. Next Wednesday, I have already told the Committee's secretariat that the Justice Minister will be called next Wednesday to give the answers that AKEL wants and I hope that very soon this will also be before the Plenary of the Parliament," he noted.
Asked about the same issue, the AKEL MP said that no postponement had been requested. "Since last time we had asked the ministry and all relevant bodies to submit a study showing the following: Of the thousands of pending appeals or cases that the judicial reform - as it is called - will decongest the system, how will they be distributed in the Court of Appeal and the other courts that are being created and what is the timetable for their adjudication?"
As he said, "we want to know that the already existing problem of delays will be solved in a certain period of time and we want to know that the cases will be distributed to the specialized courts in a certain way. We reiterated that such reforms, structural and essential, should gather the broadest possible consensus of the parties," he concluded.
RIK and the Law on Evidence
In his statements, Tornaritis also referred to the issue that saw the light of day in relation to interference in a TV show and said that he called for a disciplinary investigation. Specifically, when asked about what happened recently at RIK, Tornaritis said that "we must all defend the journalist's right to do his job properly, impartially and independently. This is exactly why I have personally requested a disciplinary investigation to see why my colleague Kostis Efstathiou was removed from the Cyprus State Foundation, and I say the Cyprus State Foundation because, as you well know, it is subsidised by the money, the hiccups of the Cypriot taxpayer. For this very reason we expect answers from the council and from the management of RIK."
Moreover, Mr. Pasiourtides in his statements also referred to the issue of the amendment of the Evidence Law, stating that "there is a tendency whenever there is a difficulty either for banks or for credit purchase companies to prove their cases. These obstacles, which may also be due to legal or procedural measures invoked by borrowers, who are the weakest in this case, should be removed in order to make it easier for banks and credit purchase companies to prove their cases'.
"I must stress that the weak party in this relationship is the borrower and if and when the credit purchase companies want to prove their cases they should overcome these obstacles and at the end of the day justice should prevail. If the law will be to secure a judgment against the borrower fine, but we cannot continually remove safeguards from borrowers and make it easier for companies and banks to prove their cases."
Source: CNA
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