There have been a total of 22 physical attacks on or robberies of delivery drivers in Limassol so far this year, the city’s police said on Wednesday.
Their official figures state that a total of 18 people have been arrested in connection with the incidents, of whom one has been handed a 10-month prison sentence.
Limassol police’s deputy operations director Marinos Vasiliou said on Wednesday that the three most recent such incidents appear “to not involve racist motives”, but instead were simple thefts.
The most recent incident took place on Tuesday evening, with €500 in cash being stolen from a delivery driver.
Asked about the motives behind this incident and others, Vasiliou said, “there is an element of imitation by, obviously, young people, from one area, young people from another area, but there is no connection that indicates that this is an organised group committing these types of offences.”
He added that while there is “always room for improvement”, his department’s measures “seem to be paying off”.
However, he said, the police in this regard “have a difficult job”, and he then added that “there are a large number of delivery drivers operating in this city and we cannot have a police car behind every single one.”
He said the police have mapped the area where attacks on delivery drivers have been recorded and said “preventative measures will be increased” in these areas, but also said there may be other cases in other areas which have not been reported to the police.
To this end, he said a number of incidents have not been reported by the delivery drivers themselves, but by local residents and other passersby. Additionally, he said, it is possible that some delivery drivers are not reporting attacks because either they do not have valid residence documents or no money was stolen.
The police’s announcement that there have been a total of 22 such attacks in Limassol so far this year appears to have put paid to an apparent discrepancy in the figures which was present during discussions on the matter at the House human rights committee on Monday.
Deputy police chief Ioannis Georgiou had said there had been a total of 11 attacks on delivery drivers last year, though also landed on the figure of 18 arrests. Justice Minister Marios Hartsiotis had said at the end of last month that there had been 18 such attacks – a figure which tallies with the number announced on Wednesday as four such attacks have been recorded this month.
Hartsiotis had announced that figure after a meeting with Labour Minister Yiannis Panayiotou and police chief Themistos Arnaoutis, and added at the time that “this is a serious and concerning phenomenon.”
“Beyond the offence, it also has a racist element,” he added.
Panayiotou said at the time that all workers have the right to feel safe at work, and added, “such behaviours have no place in our country, which victimise the vulnerable and weak employees, particularly when there is a racist element in these cases.”
