Newsroom
Some of Cyprus’ most financially vulnerable residents are being forced to collect, and sometimes pay heavily for, bank statements that the welfare services already have legal permission to request.
If the documents are not delivered on time, their Guaranteed Minimum Income, known by its Greek initials EEE, can be temporarily suspended. Resolving the case may then take as long as three months.
In other words, families dependent on state support are being made to carry paperwork between two institutions that could communicate directly. For some, the benefit caught in the middle is their only source of income.
The issue was raised Thursday before the House Audit Committee, which called on banks and the Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare to establish a direct electronic system for exchanging the necessary information.
The Deputy Ministry already receives limited information from banks, including the highest amount held in a recipient’s account and the balance at the end of each month. Recipients are legally required to sign an authorization allowing welfare officials to access financial information when their eligibility is being examined.
Problems arise when an account contains something unusual and officials need a more detailed statement.
Instead of requesting it directly from the bank, the Welfare Benefits Management Service tells the recipient to obtain the documents and submit them within a set period. Failure to do so can result in the benefit being frozen.
The procedure has left people caught between government offices and bank counters, often with no clear way to resolve the problem quickly.
Charged as much as €5 per page
AKEL MP Nikos Kettiros told the committee that some banks charge recipients as much as €5 for every page of an account statement. In one case, he said, a person allegedly paid around €200 simply to collect the documents demanded by the welfare service.
For someone receiving minimum-income support, €200 is not a minor administrative expense. It can represent groceries, electricity, medicine, or part of the monthly rent.
Kettiros said that once recipients have signed the required authorization, their responsibility should end. It should then be up to the bank and the government service to exchange the information.
Audit Committee Chairman Zacharias Koulias agreed, describing the existing process as a serious inconvenience for recipients. He called on banks to provide the documents directly and without charging customers.
When a government grant looks like extra wealth
Koulias referred to one case in which a recipient’s bank balance exceeded the €5,000 limit after receiving a government subsidy to install solar panels.
On paper, the account appeared to hold more money than EEE rules allow. In reality, the additional money came from another state program and was intended for a specific expense.
That discrepancy triggered the need for further investigation and another round of paperwork for the recipient.
The example shows how a payment from one part of the government can create problems with another when state systems do not communicate properly.
It is a familiar problem in Cyprus: citizens are asked to produce certificates, statements, and confirmations containing information already held elsewhere in the public or banking system. For financially secure households, that can be irritating. For people relying on welfare to eat and pay their bills, it can be devastating.
Welfare service wants PDFs sent directly
Deputy Ministry Director General Yiannis Nikolaidis said the service is not seeking unrestricted access to people’s accounts. It wants the ability to ask a bank for a statement in PDF format when an irregularity requires closer examination.
The service eventually receives the same statement from the recipient, he noted. The proposed change would simply remove the citizen from the middle and make the process faster and more reliable.
Officials also said the authorization signed by recipients already covers access to financial information held by banks and other institutions.
