The Interior Ministry on Thursday rejected claims by DIKO parliament member Zacharias Koulias that civil service posts had been filled without exams, saying the process had been carried out “entirely lawfully” and that the Public Service Commission, not the ministry, made the appointments.
Koulias told the House Interior Committee earlier in the day that about 160 posts had been filled without exams, including 20 on the A13 salary scale and seven on the A15 scale. District Officers told the same session that their offices were losing experienced staff who were not being replaced, leaving them struggling to serve the public.
Ministry response
The ministry said the seven Director of Interior posts (scale A15) and the 20 Senior Interior Officer posts (scale A13) had been filled under article 34 of the Public Service Laws of 1990 to 2025. It said his claims did not reflect reality at all.
Under the law, it said, the advisory committees set up for the purpose had discretion to hold oral exams for the candidates. After taking into account the results, candidates’ qualifications, personal files, annual service reports and other information in their applications, the committees submitted reasoned reports on all candidates, with recommendations, to the Public Service Commission. The list for each post contained four times as many candidates as there were vacancies.
The ministry said Koulias had evidently spoken without knowing the procedure, and that his remarks were very surprising because the matter was being raised two years after the posts were filled. The Director of Interior posts were published in the Official Gazette on 27 January 2023 and filled by the Public Service Commission on 20 September 2024. The Senior Interior Officer posts were published on 3 February 2023 and filled on 12 December 2024.
It said it would not comment further on what it called other unfounded claims by Koulias.
Koulias’s claims
Koulias, who described the matter as a scandal of enormous proportions, said those hired had been serving in other government departments and were upgraded to higher salary scales without the required procedures being followed.
He alleged they had been placed in posts where they were comfortable and did not want to move to the District Administrations, where in theory they were meant to serve. Meanwhile, he said, District Administration officers were being asked to move to other departments in other towns, to be replaced by the newly upgraded officers.
Earlier reports of the session quoted Koulias as saying the posts had been advertised and filled by the Administration Department without written exams, and that a small number of posts originally planned had grown to 160. “They hired their friends,” he said.
District Administrations short-staffed
“I had seven officers and I’m left with three,” the Larnaca District Officer told the committee, describing the effect on public services and on the running of the District Administration. Other District Officers made similar points.
The committee heard that officers in key posts at the District Administrations who retire are not being replaced, and that training their replacements takes two to three years.
The committee was told the problem comes at a critical time. After the local government reform, staff were hired for community clusters and were due to be trained by experienced District Administration officers. With retirements and planned transfers, those staff would simply be left untrained.
The president of the Union of Cyprus Communities, Kitromilides, appealed for the existing officers to stay in their posts, warning that otherwise communities would be paralysed because they would have no staff able to handle rural residents’ daily affairs.
Affected District Administration officers said they were under psychological pressure, having been repeatedly told to hand over the areas they manage to others, and warned they would not do so. They said some of them had built their lives in Paphos or other districts and had no intention of moving to Nicosia or elsewhere if replacements were eventually found.
The committee heard that these officers are on the front line when natural disasters or other incidents require coordination in a crisis, and that many have dealt with the public’s everyday problems for decades. It was told they are not irreplaceable, but that people who had never handled District Administration matters could not take over the work overnight.
MPs’ concerns
Committee chairman Aristos Damianou said that since 2025 he and the committee had demanded the process not go ahead, as they foresaw the harm to the District Administrations and to public services. He said he had discussed the matter with the interior minister, who had taken some steps but appeared to have come up against a wall of resistance. “We were not heeded, and here is the result,” he said.
Parliament member Christos Christofides said the functioning of Nicosia’s communities had seized up and that if the situation continued, services to the public would grind to a halt.
DISY parliament member Dimitris Dimitriou said parliament had been ignored and that action had been taken without its involvement, despite assurances that the administration would come back to discuss the matter.
