Not a single worker has arrived in Cyprus under the intergovernmental agreement with Egypt, Labour Minister Marinos Mousiouttas conceded on Thursday, as he urged employers and officials to put the scheme into use to ease shortages in construction.

Speaking to journalists after a session of the labour advisory board, Mousiouttas said that for various reasons “so far we have not managed to have a single arrival”.

He said the agreement needed to be implemented “so as not to leave Cyprus exposed” to labour shortages.

The agreement was widened during a ministerial visit to Egypt last Easter, originally covering livestock farming, and now also takes in construction, tourism, computing and retail.

“Since then, there has been an effort by both us and the representatives of the Egyptian government to start this process,” he said, so that those interested in working in specific professions could be identified.

Requests have already reached the ministry, as the employers’ federation (Oev) and the chamber of commerce (Keve) have sent applications from large companies seeking particular skills, mainly in construction.

Mousiouttas cautioned that the construction shortage “does not depend only on whether workers will come from Egypt or not”.

Both Cyprus and Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding in June 2024, which regulates the entry and residence of Egyptian workers and sets up a joint committee to oversee it.

The building contractors’ association (Oseok) told the Cyprus Mail the memorandum had not been fully utilised by the government, stressing that the industry needed some 5,000 more workers to replenish the stock of labourers leaving under the government’s Syrian repatriation scheme.