.jpg)
After several weeks of postponements, parliament voted on Thursday a controversial bill that shuts large department stores on Sunday and designates some areas exempt from the bill as “tourist areas”, prompting supermarket owners to call it discriminatory on Friday.
The bill, that still needs presidential approval to come into force as of May 15, will allow all shops to remain open all week until 8pm in winter and until 9pm in summer.
It was passed by the combined votes of communist AKEL, who are against working on Sundays, the centrist party DIKO, the socialist EDEK, and the single-seat parties of the Greens and Citizens Alliance.
Opposing the motion, and the only sane voice in parliament, was the ruling DISY party that drummed up 15 votes in the 56-seat House, an indication of the mood over the next 12 months as parliament prepares for elections and MPs are desperate to get re-elected.
Exempt from the Sunday prohibition are the popular tourist areas of Ayia Napa, Protaras, Polis Chrysochous, Latsi, Coral Bay and the walled town centre of Nicosia, but only for summer.
Going against all free market laws, only small shops selling souvenirs, handicraft and “traditional” Cyprus foodstuff and drinks, as well as jewellers, mini-markets and kiosks, all no larger than 150 sq.m. are allowed to remain open on Sundays.
In effect, this means that kiosks and mini-marts will return to selling household goods and foodstuff on Sundays, but charging exorbitant prices as they will be cornering the market.
Nicos Shacolas, Chairman of the Shacolas Group retailer giant, that includes Debenhams stores, the DIY Super Home Centre and the main malls in all towns, blasted the MPs on Friday, saying their decision is “catastrophic, dysfunctional, impractical and sets to discriminate among interested parties,” and that this does not serve the public interest.
Having warned earlier on Thursday that passage of such a law would mean about 1,200 layoffs who would be redundant from Sunday work, including in retail and support services, Shacolas chose to set a calmer tone, for now, saying that retailers will wait for the President’s decision and will not hasten to sack anyone, especially as the new law has yet to come into effect.
He added that the Group’s legal advisers deemed the new law as unconstitutional and will resort, if necessary, to the courts to mend this “serious anomaly”.
Over the past few weeks, staff at retail shops, among the estimated 7,000 that have found jobs because of the liberalised Sunday shopping hours, warned that they will be laid off if the bill passed.
The government, whose Labour Minister was stripped by parliament of the right to set Sunday shopping hours by seasonal decrees, had proposed a fully liberalised market, while opposition parties, wanting to flex their muscles prior to next year’s parliamentary elections, wanted to ban Sunday shopping altogether and reduce work hours during other days as well.
A compromise of sorts was conceived by the centrist DIKO, that shut stores on Sundays, but extended hours on other days and allowed a limited category of shops to remain open.
The moral of the story: if you’re hungry on Sundays, buy a souvenir!
