NICOSIA, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) — The drop in the value of the Turkish lira has brought despair to Turkish Cypriots, their leader, Mustafa Akinc, said on Thursday, after announcing cuts in the salaries of top officials.
“With every day it passes the money in our pockets loses its value, inflation rises, those who have loans in foreign currency are facing big problems…It is clear we are going through difficult times,” Akinci said in an address to people who gathered to express their displeasure at the situation.
Turkish Cypriots use the Turkish lira as their currency since 1983, when Turkey unilaterally set up a breakaway state in the part of Cyprus its troops occupied in reaction to a coup by the military rulers of Greece in 1974.
In the occupied part of Cyprus, the Turkish currency has lost more than 20 percent against the euro, which is being used by Greek Cypriots as members of the European Union.
Akinci said that the so-called government of the breakaway state has introduced austerity measures, cutting his salary and the salaries of top officials and stopped paying for overtime work.
In protest, trade unions representing public workers announced that they would work-to-rule.
Sener Elcil, the general secretary of a trade union representing public school teachers, said the purchasing power of a civil servant fell by 61 percent and of those receiving a minimum wage by 56 percent.
He said that the salary of a teacher with a starting salary of the equivalent of 780 euros (909 U.S. dollars) dropped to 482 euros and the minimum wage of the equivalent of 550 euros is now worth just 314 euros.
In the last few days alone the price of electricity and fuel has doubled, and people were forced to buy only the essentials.
Ironically, Akinci said that Greek Cypriots, who run the government of the officially recognized Republic of Cyprus, are an example of people who have managed to come out of their worst economic crisis which hit the country in 2013.
On the day Akinci spoke about the doles of Turkish Cypriots, on the other side of the dividing line, the Cyprus Statistics Service, Cystat, said that the government had managed to more than double its fiscal surplus in the first six months, relative to the same period last year.
Cystat said the surplus was 515.7 million euros, compared to 212.2 million euros in the first six months of 2017, mainly on account of an increase of indirect taxes, which reached almost 2 billion euros, an indication for strong purchasing power in the government controlled areas of Cyprus. (1 euro =1.17 U.S. dollars)
