Coronavirus: Unficyp ready to help over opening checkpoints

Unficyp on Thursday said it was ready to facilitate and support both sides with efforts to ease restrictions at crossing points when conditions allow.

The peacekeeping mission expressed the hope that both sides would continue to cooperate closely as they address the public health emergency across the island.

“This includes coordinating their efforts to ease restrictions at the crossing points, when the situation allows,” Unficyp spokesperson Aleem Siddique told the Cyprus Mail.

Unficyp’s statements follow the call by around 2,000 Turkish Cypriot workers living in the north but working in the south of the island to authorities on both sides to facilitate their daily crossings to get to work.

The group, that call themselves Those who work in the south, had also sent a letter to Unficyp Chief of Mission Elizabeth Spehar asking her for her urgent assistance for conveying their concerns to the relevant authorities to take immediate action.

They also said that though they do not represent pupils, the same problem was faced by those pupils who live in the north and go to school in the south.

The group also raised legal and ethical implications arguing that according to constitutional law every citizen of the Republic of Cyprus must have equal rights no matter the conditions. “The counter measures taken to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic are applied in a way that violates this law, since workers are legally prevented from going to work while their colleagues have the opportunity to work because they reside on the other side of the island,” they said.

Neither of the two sides has given a date yet as regards opening the crossings, though both had said this would be done towards the final rounds of relaxations of measures against the spread of coronavirus.

Government spokesman Kyriacos Koushios said on Wednesday that the government was willing to consider allowing Turkish Cypriots who need to cross daily from the north to get to their workplaces in the south, if the Turkish Cypriot side allows them to do so.

The spokesman had argued that it was the Turkish Cypriot side that banned entry through all crossings, whereas the government suspended the operations of only four of them, leaving five open (Ayios Dhometios, Ledra Palace, Limnitis, Strovilia and Pergamos).

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