Filenews 8 January 2024 - by Adamos Adamou
A census of all employees in the private sector as well as their terms of employment is promoted by the Ministry of Labour, aiming, among other things, to have a complete and real-time picture of the labour market. The ultimate goal of the government is to promote, based on the data at its disposal, policies for better regulation of work, an issue that the Minister of Labor Yiannis Panayiotou referred to many times in the past and only yesterday in the interview he gave to "F".
The census that is being prepared is expected to start in the first half of the year and will be carried out through the information system "Ergani" which was granted by Greece and is already being used. Since the end of 2021, all new hires of employees have been recorded electronically and mandatorily, according to legislation, in this system, but not other data, despite the technical capabilities provided by both the ERGANI and ERGANI II systems, which were also granted by the Hellenic Republic to Cyprus.
The aim of the electronic census is for the Ministry of Labour to have through "Ergani" real data on all employees, on their nationality, their terms of employment, their working hours, the sectors in which they are employed, whether or not they are covered by collective agreements, etc. The new database will help not only monitor the market and promote new policies, but also Such as the elaboration of a plan to extend the coverage of collective agreements, which is also being promoted, but also the surveillance/monitoring of existing policies such as the Strategy for the Employment of Foreigners will be strengthened.
According to our information, the social partners were already informed at a previous meeting of the Labour Advisory Board held in December about the government's intention by the Minister of Labour, who also referred to the issue publicly after a recent meeting he had with the leaders of OEB and CCCI.
Today, the Ministry of Labour draws data on the situation in the labour market mainly from the Social Insurance Services, which collects contributions for the social insurance system, which are often not in real time, but arise later. With the changes promoted, there will be real-time datanot only on the number of employees and their remuneration, but also on other essential terms of employment that employers must inform their employees anyway, based on the Transparent and Predictable Working Terms Law that was recently voted.
The aim is to fully exploit the potential of the "Ergani" information system, but also for the State to have a full picture of the situation in the labor market. The creation of a new database through the census that is being promoted will give this picture, as today, although as mentioned data are drawn from Social Insurance, nevertheless these do not give all the data and have weaknesses. Indicative of these weaknesses is that today, workers, either EU or from third countries, who have now acquired Cypriot citizenship, continue to present themselves as foreigners.
However, with the aim of starting the census of all employees in the first half of 2024, the Ministry of Labor has already begun the preparatory work and is in communication and cooperation with the Greek company that created the ERGANI and ERGANI II systems. At the same time, the Ministry is undergoing procedures for the procedural part of the upcoming census and various scenarios are being examined for the institutional way it will evolve and whether any legislative arrangements will be needed, which for the moment is the prevailing scenario.
