The Pan-Cyprian Guild Isotita has welcomed the return of civil servants‘ and pensioners’ right to healthcare for services outside GHS, following Parliament’s vote yesterday amending the regulations. The guild says the move restores an injustice of years that deprived them of their acquired right to access state hospitals.
In a statement, Isotita’s Board expressed satisfaction with the House of Representatives plenary’s approval of the 2025 Amendment Regulations, describing it as marking the restoration of legality and the return of civil servants’ and pensioners’ right to healthcare for services outside GHS.
The decision corrects a blatant injustice that occurred in April 2024, when this right was abolished arbitrarily without any prior consultation, despite an unjustified two-year delay, the statement said. The restoration is not an act of mercy but vindication of the guild’s persistent struggles, which from the first moment denounced the institutional deviation and demanded respect for labour institutions.
Constitutional violations
The statement emphasised the moral background of the injustice that has now been corrected. Civil servants, although they had explicitly guaranteed free healthcare in their employment terms, showed a consistently high sense of responsibility over the years. They accepted and embraced the introduction of the General Healthcare System (GHS) as a supreme social necessity, agreeing to burden their salaries with deductions of 2.65%.
This stance proves their commitment to the common good, according to the statement. Therefore, the State’s action in 2024 to proceed with further unilateral removal of their remaining rights, ignoring their previous contribution, constituted an act that was not only legally flawed but morally unacceptable.
The statement said Isotita stood from the outset as a bulwark against this arbitrariness, highlighting blatant constitutional violations. The 2024 decision did not only violate procedure but struck at the core of the rule of law.
First, Article 28 of the Constitution (Principle of Equality) was brutally violated, as the abolition of the benefit targeted vindictively and selectively only civil servants, leaving the rights of other categories of state employees untouched, creating two-speed citizens within the state machinery itself, the statement said.
Second, Article 21.2 of the Constitution (Trade Union Freedom) and ILO International Labour Conventions were flouted, according to the guild.
As explicitly determined by Supreme Court case law in the landmark PASYNΟ decision (1994), the State has a legal obligation to consult with trade unions before changing essential employment terms. Parliament’s unilateral action at the time constituted a direct assault on the right of hearing and social dialogue.
Executive responsibility
The statement said satisfaction with the result cannot hide the grave and continuing responsibilities of the Executive Authority, whose stance was constitutionally questionable. The Government bears full responsibility, not only for the delay in submitting the corrective regulations for almost two years, but mainly for violating Article 35 of the Constitution, which makes it the guarantor of effective application of fundamental rights.
The Executive Authority showed guilty tolerance at the moment of crisis in 2024, the statement said. When Parliament intervened arbitrarily in an administrative regulatory act, violating the Principle of Separation of Powers, the President of the Republic should have reacted institutionally.
Whilst he had the strong weapons of Remittal (Article 51) and Reference to the Supreme Court (Article 140), he chose to remain inactive, failing to defend the Constitution and workers’ rights as he should have.
The statement concluded that yesterday proves that persistence in legality and consistent trade union action bring results, even when institutions are inactive or break the law.
Isotita declared that workers’ acquired rights are not negotiable and that any future attempt to flout the Constitution will find the guild opposed again. The restoration of healthcare is a victory of legality and the rule of law over expediency and hastiness.
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