The Political and Economic History of North Cyprus by Tufan Ekici

Author:Tufan Ekici
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030134792
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Labour Supply in Civil Services

The numbers of civil servants employed over the years are shown in Tables 5 and 6. Whilst these tables do not include the number of public sector workers at municipalities and state economic enterprises (SEEs), civil service employment had fluctuated over the years, averaging at 1.6% growth per year. There was a relatively sharp decline in 1995 in the number of civil servants in all of the categories of employment (except state teachers). The largest shares of civil servants have been state teachers and police. On average, there has been a ratio of 1.7:1 currently working civil servant for every retiree from the civil services. In the next chapter, we will discuss the implications of this for sustainability of pension funds.

Unlike previously, there is some good statistical data for labour market in northern Cyprus after 2004 when household labour force surveys (HLFS) were conducted, and the data was used to estimate aggregate employment statistics. Just to give a snapshot of the most recent available data in 2011, around 23% of public employees had less than high school education and they have been working for about 12.5 years in the public sector. On the other hand, 45% of private sector employees had less than high school education and they have on average 7.5 years of tenure with the same employer. These differences could explain the 55% wage gap between public and private sector employees.6 The change in regulations in 2010 regarding the salaries in public sector could have lowered the popularity of labour supply to this sector, but 2011 data cannot capture the effects, if any, due to the limited after-policy time-span covered.

Two sets of civil service positions under TRNC law deserve special attention: teachers and medical doctors. State teachers (who made up around 23% of all civil servants in 2009) and physicians working at state hospitals have been very popular positions. State-employed teachers constituted on average 16.7% of all the civil servants during 1980–1995 period, but this ratio jumped to 20% and higher after 1995. This area has been a popular choice of occupation for many Turkish Cypriots as well as a tool for nepotism favoured by many politicians. State teachers are subject to additional retirement benefits compared to other civil servants. Furthermore, they have fewer working hour requirements than the rest of civil service whereby they only work 8 months a year but are paid 13 months a year, and only 5 hours a day (and have up to 25 sick days). The rest of the day they are not allowed to work in another job (a second job is prohibited by the Civil Servants Act, Article 41), but of course due to lack of monitoring by the authorized offices, many have used this option. Although the evolution of pupil/teacher ratios (which is used as a proxy for quality) in state schools show significant improvement over the years and are comparable to some of highly developed states, there have been many complaints regarding education in state schools over recent years.

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