Nicosia mayor Charalambos Prountzos on Thursday categorically denied that the municipality has imposed unofficial quotas on municipal traffic officers gauging their job performance based on the number of fines they issue.

Appearing on a television news programme, the mayor said the municipality has issued no such instructions to traffic officers.

“During my eight months as mayor, no instruction has been issued to municipal traffic officers for achieving monetary targets,” Prountzos stated.

Nor did he believe that his predecessor Constantinos Yiorkadjis had such a policy in place, as alleged by the municipal officers themselves.

Rather, said the mayor, the municipality has issued strict instructions for cracking down on “serious traffic offences” – such as parking in spaces reserved for the disabled or parking in spots which obstruct traffic.

But Nicosia’s municipal traffic wardens insist that such an informal policy – quotas on issuing fines – does exist.

In a letter signed by 26 of the 31 traffic wardens employed by the municipality, and addressed by their attorney to Prountzos, they allege that they’ve been told to issue at least one fine worth €500 per patrol – or alternatively to issue at least five fines worth €100 each.

Moreover, they claim that this quota is being used by the municipality to assess their job performance. They say that they regularly receive generic letters informing them that they are “underperforming” – except it’s never spelled out how.

Their attorney Theofanis Andreou accused the municipality of seeking to “manipulate” the traffic officers.

“It is illegal, what they are asking of the traffic wardens. And it puts them in an adversarial position with the residents of Nicosia.”

Evaluating the performance of the officers in this way is illegal as this is not stipulated in any rule or regulation.

Because of this unwritten policy, Andreou asserted, traffic officers have to work in a climate of “intimidation, forced to be as strict as possible”.

The policy of quotas also interferes with the discretion of the municipal officers. They have the discretion to issue warnings to traffic offenders rather than fines.

In the letter addressed to the mayor – which Prountzos said he has not yet received – the lawyer called on the municipality to clear up its position on the matter and explicitly censure this policy.

The traffic officers also maintain that they never accepted this informal quotas policy and objected to it from the outset.

They also notify the mayor that they “reserve their legal rights”.