Cyprus social grants to continue

The Cypriot government is committed to social grants to help low income families, in response to the self-restraint and the responsible behaviour working people have shown in the overall effort to meet European Union criteria to adopt the euro, Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos said.
Addressing the annual congress of one of the two largest trade unions, SEK, he announced that soon the government will have a package of social grants ready for implementation.
“The sacrifices working people have made were not in vain. We have succeeded in our objective, to join the euro area in January 2008 and this is a significant achievement,” he said.
He said that state, in appreciation of these sacrifices, has to reward “the responsible attitude and the self-restraint shown by the working people with a new package of social grants which we shall announce soon and aims at providing additional social and financial assistance to lower income people.”
Papadopoulos reiterated his long-standing policy that the government has no intention of sacrificing the social state for the sake of joining the euro area, stressing that “the protection of the rights and the freedoms of the working people is a priority we are committed to.”