Groups representing disabled and elderly people complained to parliament that Social Welfare Services were absent when highly vulnerable people needed support, citing a case in which officers said a family’s home was too dirty to visit. Deputy Minister of Social Welfare Tina Pavlou admitted to the House Labour Committee that welfare officers work in miserable conditions.
Themida Anthopoulou, president of the Cyprus Confederation of Organisations of the Disabled (KYSOA), said her members enter homes where people live in destitution or worse. When they passed on complaints that the services were not contacting families, “they answer us: it is too dirty and we are not going,” she said, adding that her members do go.
She cited another case where there had been no contact with the services for four years. For a month and a half, she said, KYSOA had been asking the services for a reply so it could visit people under state protection.
Dimos Antoniou, president of the Cyprus Third Age Observatory, said an elderly low-income pensioner receiving the Guaranteed Minimum Income had been unable to have an operation on his leg since 26 August because home care had not been arranged. The observatory had contacted the services without any response, he said, adding that it was not an isolated case. With the population ageing, he said, needs in the near future would be a “tsunami”.
A representative of the Patients’ Observatory said there were delays in benefits and aids, particularly for chronic patients, some of whom reach the point of destitution, and for elderly people who often have to cope alone. The observatory called for the services’ needs to be assessed, for less bureaucracy and for stronger social support.
Pavlou described the restructuring of the services as an ambitious and necessary plan. Since her appointment she had visited almost all their offices, she told the committee, and identified three problems: the buildings, which she called tragic; the technological infrastructure; and the mental health of officers working on the front line.
An officer today has to deal with 90 cases of violence a day, Pavlou added, and officers are burdened with many tasks outside their responsibilities. She said she would work to strengthen their support for as long as she held the post. The committee also heard that there were 150 open cases of violence in Nicosia, against an average of around 30 in other countries such as the United States.
Social Welfare Services director Maria Kyratzi said a study on modernising the services was now with a contractor. Modernisation was announced in 2019, but the study began only in 2026. Kyratzi said time had been needed in 2019 and 2020 to work out what the services had to provide, during a difficult period that included legal disputes.
Some modernisation had been carried out through other policies, Kyratzi said, and six of the 15 points announced before the elections had been implemented. These included a neighbourhood social worker scheme with 15 officers and 10 supervisors, and child protection against violence and other behaviour.
