in-cyprus 19 May 2020 -Bouli Hadjioannou
The 8998 SMS service ends on Thursday, 10 weeks and thousands of fines later.
The system is to be ‘retired’ as restrictions on movement are scrapped with phase two of the relaxation of the lockdown.
This comes as relief to the public and probably also to police who have carried out thousands of checks and issued thousands of fines since the system was introduced on March 11.
Figures published by CNA on Tuesday show that overall, police carried out 894,654 checks on pedestrians, drivers and premises regarding compliance with the lockdown decree and booked 11,643.
The vast majority were on pedestrians and drivers — nearly 750,000 checks and more than 11,000 booked.
Of these 779 have submitted a complaint that they were unfairly fined. A special committee has so far examined 550 complaints. Of these 200 were found to be justified and a letter has been been sent to the attorney general recommending he suspend the fine.
According to figures published by CNA on Tuesday, Nicosia recorded the biggest number of checks, but Limassol had the largest number of violations.
Overall:
Nicosia: 217,959 checks, 2,708 booked
Limassol: 172,097 checks, 3,270 booked
Larnaca: 154,020 checks, 1,680 booked
Paphos: 163,981 checks, 1,548 booked
Famagusta: 85,997 checks, 1,680 booked
Morphou: 52,505 checks, 170 booked
Pedestrians and drivers:
Of the total of 894,654 checks, 749,086 concerned restrictions on movement. A total of 11,124 were booked.
Nicosia again had the most checks, and Limassol again led in the number of violations.
Nicosia: 184,030 checks, 2,643 booked
Limassol: 150,184 checks, 3,121 booked
Larnaca: 125,347 checks, 1,601 booked
Paphos: 139,292 checks, 1,429 booked
Famagusta: 67,020 checks, 1,591 booked
Morphou: 35,118 checks, 152 booked
Police HQ traffic unit: 43,198 checks, 514 booked
MMAD: 4,897 checks, 73 booked
Premises
There were 519 bookings for premises after 145,568 checks. (Nicosia 33,929 checks, 65 booked, Limassol 21,913 checks, 149 booked, Larnaca 28,673 checks, 79 booked, Paphos 24,689 checks, 119 booked, Famagusta 18,977 checks, 89 booked, Morphou 17,387 checks, 18 booked).
