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The Cyprus Tourism Organisation has done it again, this time producing a meaningless advertisement that was published in the UK press. A first glimpse of the ad (“Cyprus, from traditional villages to a warm welcome in no time”), depicting a village scene with an ‘old’ man, a priest, a tourist and her young daughter, suggests that the person who created the artwork and the other person in charge of approving the budget are simply clueless and are once again responsible for wasting taxpayers’ money.
But no-one will do anything about it because the government, with a renewed mandate for another five years, will continue to tolerate such behaviour by civil servants with a strong trade union backing, regardless if they are suitable for the job they have been tasked with.
Which could also explain why opposition parties avoid making a fuss because, either the person in charge for the advertising gaffe is a party member, or worse, the company that won the contract to design and place the adverts is a party supporter.
And this is supposed to be one of the three government departments that will become junior ministries, supposedly to improve efficiencies and implement a national strategy on tourism. If this is the case, then God help us with the new cabinet offices, which is hoped were not created simply to give more jobs to party friends and favours to political supporters.
Tourism, just like shipping which is to get the first junior ministry next month, are the pillars of the economy that have helped produce steady and growing income, but not because of the clever achievements of a CTO employee.
The rising number of tourist arrivals could very soon stop if we are unable to sustain this momentum – which needs to be achieved by maintaining competitive hotel rates and air fares, as well as offering quality services and decent infrastructure.
Wasting valuable money at a time when the CTO, as well as all the government’s promotional budgets have been slashed is not the way forward, and for this it is the board members who are responsible for keeping things in control or making sure that incompetent people are not put in charge of critical job posts (and spending).
How else can one explain the recent gaffe by another CTO campaign, this time a ‘commercial video’ to promote conferences, that had nothing to do with the subject at hand, was poorly thought through and once again was a waste of taxpayers’ money. Unless the production house was a friend/relative or simply offered a kickback to government officials to get the contract.
