ALL CHEAP imitations of the Cyprus flag on public and other buildings are to be binned under a government plan to overhaul the country’s main symbol after years of allowing it to stray from its originally prescribed colours.

The Cyprus flag has been unkindly described as a “fried egg with a twig of parsley”, not surprising given the blinding bright yellow that can be seen filling out the map of the island on some flags.

On other versions, the map of the island appears to be orange, varying from light to deep, even bordering on red in some cases. But all this is about to end, and the flag’s map restored to its former copper-coloured glory.

And apparently the Cyprus flag is not the only one flag makers are getting wrong. The blue attributed to the Greek flag and the EU flag are also the incorrect shade in many cases.

“We are now starting from scratch,” said Andreas Christou, the director of the government supplies office.

“We have investigated the whole matter. We found the original documents from the 1960s that lays out the size and shape and colours and we have developed the new specifications and design and asked the manufacturers to prepare some production samples for us because it seems every government department has been going to local manufacturers, different ones and some like the colours darker and some like them lighter. They like the map bigger or they like it smaller.”

Christou said this has been going on for years until the original was no longer seen very often.

“It was like shopping for a shirt or a skirt or something,” he said, adding that all the mixing and matching to suit the buyers had resulted in the incorrect form of the flag flying on government departments, schools and other institutions.

Christou said that from now on flags ordered by government institutions would have to come from his office and he urged other organisations and people wanting flags to purchase from there as soon as the flags become available. He said they would be sold at cost as his department was not profit-making.

Despite having located the correct specifications, Christou said that was not enough to ensure the colour would come out as it should, unless the flag-making factories used a particular paint specified in the original documents. The paint, he said is made by a British company and sold in Cyprus through one local agent.

He said one factory had come to him in the last few days with a sample but it didn’t match correctly because he discovered the factory had used another brand of paint.
“We have a machine here that can check the colour is exact,” he said.

“I have written to company in the UK to get correct shade and we have a local agent for the UK company in Cyprus. So we went to them and found that most people making flags in Cyprus have not been buying the paint from him. When you mix five to six colours to try and get the right one, and if you don’t have the right paint to mix, you will not get the result. This aroused my suspicions when we got the first sample. We asked them and they said they weren’t buying from the agent in question. I’m still hopeful. It will take a couple of weeks more. I want the final sample to be exactly according to the specifications and what the documents provide.”

The flag issue was brought to the attention of the government by DIKO deputy Sophoclis Fittis who told the Sunday Mail he had noticed the differences in the flags around the island.

“Some factories have destroyed the actual legal colours,” he said. “The colours are copper C144 and olive green C336. These are the numbers, which were decided in 1960 after Independence. There is now an effort under way to force the factories to use the real colours. I am furious about all this and so are many others because our flag is a symbol. You can’t change the color whenever you want to.”

Christou said his investigation had also established that the Greek and EU flags were also being made in the wrong colours.

“It appears people who need a flag go to local manufacturers to get them,” he said.
“Since we now have all the information we are going to correct the situation.”

Local flag-maker Michalis Rossides said he was still in the process of making a sample for the government. He said he didn’t know why the flags were all different colours.

THE flag of Cyprus is the only one in the world with a map of the country. It was designed by a Turkish Cypriot artist. According to the Constitution, the flag background must be white. The map of the island in the middle must comprise 44 per cent of the flag area and have the colour of copper (144-C). The crest under the island and the olive-tree leaves, must have the colour of olive green (336-C) “The International code numbers of the colours of the flag of the Republic of Cyprus (PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM (PMS) are: (a) Colour of copper 144-C (b) Colour of olive-green 336-C. Size: - in ratio 3:5,” it says. On a point of trivia, the Cyprus flag received only 40 out of 100 by a design expert. It was described as: “The mother of all flags with maps.”