Letter of ASDYK to the Chief of Police and the Minister of Justice for ‘illegalities’ against Police – Firefighters

The Independent Trade Union of Civil Servants (ASDYK) sent a letter to the Chief of Police with a notification to the Minister of Justice, recording, as it states, “illegalities against the members of the Police and the Fire Brigade.”

“Tolerance should not be misinterpreted as an impossibility of claiming human working conditions by the Security Forces. This claim will always be made legally, as befits the executive bodies of the Law,” states the letter released to the media.

According to the KAS-ASDYK Organizing Committee, the working regime of overtime beyond the specified working hours, according to which one is off duty, is merely political and has no legal basis.

“It is a violation of the European labour acquis to the detriment of the professional, personal and family lives of police officers and firefighters. We are clear to the members of the Security Forces that if anyone is illegally ordered, without their consent, to work overtime without being paid, this will be considered a violation of working hours, while their payment will be sought through justice,” states the Union. The latter also informs its members that for those who seek legal aid, this will be provided free of charge by KAS-ASDYK through its lawyers.

ASDYK states that the so-called “cards” of all members of the Security Forces, where the endless unpaid working hours are recorded, “will be under scrutiny by the legal advisers of KAS-ASDYK, in order to investigate the conditions under which these orders were given. We would like to point out that discipline and hierarchy do not imply illegality.”

According to ASDYK, which is requesting the official written position of the Chief of Police on the matter, there is “violation of labour acquis in 2020 and the illegal orders, based on intimidation, some officers give without the approval of the Chief of Police force the members of the Security Forces to mandatory daily duty so as not to “be paid on public holidays, while working with minimal staff, endangering the safety of the state and citizens, and they don’t provide concessions for days or hours of rest while they compulsorily include members in working overtime.”

These, the letter states, will henceforth be the complaint by KAS-ASDYK, “because the illegalities of the respective responsible departments will not be paid by the taxpayer of the Republic of Cyprus.”

“We call on the members of the Security Forces to record in writing who they received illegal instructions from and whose name (Chief’s, Deputy Chief’s, Director’s, Commander’s) these specific officers referred to. We are convinced that the Police and political leadership do not know facts “as they are, and this is the most important reason for the urgent need to be informed first hand,” the letter reads.

Source: CNA

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