His commitment to arrange meetings early next week to discuss the issues that concerns workers at AHK,Minister of Labour and Social Security Kyriakos Kousios said in a statement to CNA, noting that who will attend each meeting will be decided during coordination on Thursday morning with the Ministers of Finance and Energy, Trade and Industry.
Specifically, the Labour Minister said that "sometime tomorrow (Thursday) morning we will coordinate with the Minister of Finance Konstantinos Petridis and the Minister of Energy, Trade and Industry Natasha Pilidou to arrange the meetings" and clarified that during these contacts "it will be decided who will attend each meeting".
"My commitment is to arrange meetings next week, as early as possible," he stressed.
"I expect my colleague, the Energy Minister, to return to Cyprus from Brussels where she is in Brussels discussing with the EU energy issues concerning our country," he added.
Asked if he is optimistic about a positive outcome of the issue, Mr. Kousios said that he does not know in detail the issues and how they will be addressed by the relevant ministers and the Authority's Board.
"What I do know is that when a dead-end course is followed where there are strike measures and daily refusal, as a matter of principle, by the Government to discuss, we cannot solve problems," he stressed.
He added that "we have to realize that we have to discuss any problems."
At this point, the Labor Minister said that "maybe the period is not suitable, not only because of the holidays," he said, "but also because of the election period."
He said that "it is well known that during the election period many more requests are made than during any other period because there is an impression that the Government will be much more receptive to requests" and recalled that "this is precisely why the Cabinet has taken a decision that from 1 November onwards it will not accept any requests".
He also recalled that the work of the Parliament has been suspended until the holding of the presidential elections, resulting in some procedural shortcomings, he said, "if and when a positive result can be obtained".
"However, we should try through a structured productive dialogue to see where we end up," he said.
Referring to the whole course that the issue went through until the suspension of the strike measures of the AHK workers, Mr. Kousios said that the whole issue had been on his mind a few days ago when he had meetings with both Finance Minister Konstantinos Petridis and Energy, Trade and Industry Minister Natasha Pilidou, who could not, as a matter of principle, he said, "meet with the trade unions if strike measures had been announced."
He said that following these consultations he had with the Ministers, "it was decided that the Minister of Labour would intervene with the sole purpose of persuading the trade unions of AHK to suspend the strike measures so as to enable the relevant Ministers to have meetings with them to see how the issues of their demands could be settled."
"After these consultations and after I had consultations with both the President of AHK and the SEK and PEO guilds, it was possible to arrange a meeting yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon after the positive response of the AHK trade unions," he added.
The Labour Minister said he was briefed by the AEC trade unions "on the issues of concern to them and I made it clear that I was not the Minister responsible to discuss the individual issues and that the responsibility lies with both the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Energy."
Kousios said he told the unions that his role was to arrange "if possible a suspension of the strike action to allow for consultation" and added that the unions had responded positively to this.
At this point, the Labour Minister thanked both his fellow Ministers for authorising him to have contact with the trade unions and the members of the trade unions of the AHK and the trade unions of the SEK and PEO "for their constructive role to enable us to have a suspension of the strike measures."
Source: CNA
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