Special lane for children and teachers open at Ayios Dhometios crossing point

The special lane at the Ayios Dhometios crossing point for schoolchildren, teachers and people receiving healthcare to cross from the north is now operational.

The government’s humanitarian affairs commissioner Anna Aristotelous announced the lane’s opening after a meeting with Rizokarpaso Greek Cypriot middle school teachers’ representative Evangelos Foukas.

She said she had told Foukas that the government had “proceeded to implement [teachers’] perennial request, so that they pass through a special lane for vehicles to be able to move faster.”

This, she said, had been done “in the context of the people-centred policy of our government’s programme … with the aim of facilitating the work of the teachers who serve under difficult conditions” in Greek Cypriot and Maronite schools in Rizokarpaso and Kormakitis.

She explained that the lane can be used by parents of children living in the north who attend schools and tutoring centres in the Republic, teachers who live in the Republic but work at schools in the north and the buses which transport elderly people living in the north to hospitals in the Republic.

She added that the move had been made to “facilitate the education” of Greek Cypriot and Maronite children living in the north, especially given that “the delays at the crossing point burden the already burdened state of the schools’ operations”.

Additionally, she said the government “recognises the difficult role and the work undertaken” by Greek Cypriot and Maronite teachers who work in the north, who work “with a degree of difficulty greater than that of other schools”.

She hailed their “dedication to offer their best under these difficult conditions, which prove their strong will and unparallelled commitment to serve this country’s education.”

The special lane had initially been announced in February, with Aristotelous saying at the time that “people enclaved and resettled from Rizokarpaso, Ayia Triada, Ayios Andronikos, Kormakitis and the general Karpasia area … are subject to great inconvenience and delay.”

“The delay [at the crossing point] is added to the already long distances travelled by our elderly fellow human beings,” she added.

She added that many residents of Kormakitis had been “complaining about excessive delays at the Ayios Dhometios crossing point,” frequently having to wait for hours to be able to cross.