British Residents Society
meets the Government: 4th August 2009

Stephen day and Colin Mulcahy met the Minister of Finance, the Undersecretary in charge of Immigration and the Head of the Immigration Department and other officials on 4 August.

They described the problems for expatriates renewing their residence permits and asked what the Government intended to do.  Various ideas for coping with the problem were put forward, most of which seemed to be “too difficult”

The Government said they will install, inside the building, an electronic queueing system similar to that used in banks,. They will also provide a waiting room with seating. The Minister of Finance had authorised the expenditure and both changes would happen “in two weeks”. Two of the counter staff have been replaced with English speakers, and a liaison officer appointed for the BRS. We welcomed these gestures but wanted to know what will be done to cope with the large numbers of applicants. We will keep asking!.

We mentioned the rumours that over 60s need not apply for residence permits. It is just a rumour!  But the Government is considering ways to ease the burden of annual renewal  for over 60s. Permanent residents might face checks in future at 2 yearly intervals to see if, for instance, they had acquired criminal records or had left the country.

On property, we asked the Government to speed up the granting of permission to purchase. We were told they had been working hard on this and 950 cases are now ready for the Council of Ministers. We emphasised how badly property issues affect the TRNC's reputation abroad, and the huge amount of tax to be taken from clearing the backlog.

We also asked for clarification on the buying of Turkish title property by expatriates. We were told that the “legal position had not changed”, and could extract nothing more. We are checking this out.