Filenews 7 May 2025
Many substantial changes are being promoted through legislative regulations in the public sector, as the Council of Ministers will soon be called upon to approve bills on flexible forms of employment, which are estimated to contribute to the modernization of the public service and the work-life balance of employees, as well as to better serve citizens.
Competently, the Government had expressed its intentions for months, but yesterday the President of the Republic, Nikos Christodoulides, from the podium of the 62nd Annual Congress of PASYDY, officially announced the promotion of the implementation of the new regulations in practice.
Specifically, before the end of May, as President Christodoulides said, the Council of Ministers will approve the legislation regarding reduced employment - up to two hours a day - for those employees in the state machine who are parents of children up to 15 years old or caregivers, as well as for employees with disabilities or other health problems. He also referred to the extension of flexible working hours to two hours and the gradual implementation of mixed teleworking.
What the bills say
With the approval of the bills by the Ministerial Cabinet, their submission to the Parliament will follow, with the aim of their approval as soon as possible.
As "F" is informed, the legislation will provide for reduced working hours for specific categories of public servants, which will not exceed 6 hours per day. According to the draft bills, the reduction of working hours will be accompanied by a corresponding reduction in employees' salaries, but the final picture will be available with the submission of the final bills to the Ministry and the Parliament.
The new regulations will concern employees with health problems, disabilities and those who are parents of children up to 15 years old, as the President said yesterday. Until recently, the information that existed about the draft bills spoke of children up to 8 years old.
In addition, the flexible working hours will be extended from 11/2 hours to two hours. That is, the flexible working hours will be between 7:00 a.m./9:00 a.m. – 2:30pm/4:30pm Today, flexible working hours are 7:00am/8:30am. – 2:30pm/4:00pm
The third bill will concern the implementation of telework in the public sector, in the context of the implementation of a mixed work system, both with physical work of government employees and with teleworking.
For the first two years, teleworking will be implemented for 50 working days a year, while in the following years their number will rise to 100 days.
It is worth noting that the regulation of flexible forms of work is part of the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021-2026, through which Cyprus will receive a total amount of €1.2 billion.
What else did he do
During yesterday's conference of PASYDY, the President of the Republic also referred to the reform of the Public Service. As he said, the recent implementation of the legislation for the filling of promotion positions, on the basis of objective scoring criteria and the introduction of the institution of Examination Centers for the evaluation of candidates with modern methods, aims to enhance efficiency, transparency and meritocracy during selection procedures.
"At the same time, the new system of evaluation of public servants, which has been implemented since 2024, aims to address long-standing distortions that we all knew but did not dare to touch. The results of the implementation of the reform are continuously evaluated, in order to continuously promote improvements based on good practices," he added.
General increases and other benefits
Mr. Christodoulides also referred to the government decisions taken to strengthen the disposable income of the Public Service staff, with the granting of general increases after 15 years and the accelerating salary increase of low-paid employees, a constant request, in the Cl. A2, A5 and A7.
He also referred to the policies promoted by the Government for the reconciliation of work and family life, such as the increase of maternity leave from 18 to 22 weeks, the significant strengthening of the childbirth allowance, the staggered increase of the parental leave allowance and the extension of the child's age limit for granting parental leave from 8 to 15 years.
Finally, he referred to the digital transformation of government services, the operation of the new government gov.cy portal, the digital citizen, as well as the new Guide to Conduct and Ethics of public servants.
