TRNC government to produce leaflets to help foreign residents?

In a discussion with a government official on a different matter I was led to believe that the TRNC government were dismayed by the amount of disinformation being spread in the ex-pat community about procedures necessary for them to live here. I explained that in the UK, for example, multi-lingual leaflets could be found at the counters of most government offices. I explained that there were also multi-lingual websites explaining up-to-date information for foreign residents in the UK.

The official hinted that the TRNC government had considered similar moves but the cost of having them regularly reprinted and for websites to be regularly updated would be prohibitive, it would be difficult enough even if only one language was used, for example Turkish. The official could not understand why I was not taking his initial criticism seriously; I asked how, if you don’t communicate with foreign residents, are they supposed to know what the rules are? The answer was quick in coming, learn Turkish. The official would not accept that those with holiday homes, perhaps visiting a few months a year, would not learn enough Turkish in the first few years to be able to translate these rules.

He then pointed out that in most government offices there would be someone who could speak English but I then explained that although this was true this often meant that information given was a garbled version of the rules. I told the official that in one case I had been given information by one English speaking clerk and a few weeks later totally contradictory information by a different clerk. Of course, the rules might have changed in that time.

The official then shrugged and said that the British Residents Society was creating information booklets and had a website with the information on. My response was that even they were having a problem getting the up-to-date information so why doesn’t the government regularly send translated documents to them so that mistakes could be avoided and only the official version would be published. There was another shrug of the shoulders and, I might be wrong, a suggestion that because this does not happen in Turkey then why should it happen here.

So, the answer to the question in the title is a resounding NO!

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