Cyprus Tourism Organisation Board of Directors boycotts Pafos Opera.

The board of directors of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) took a decision to boycott the only international Opera festival of Cyprus.

The CTO has agreed to be the main sponsor for the Opera in Pafos for the last 11 years. The last Opera Festival that took place last September 2010 it was probably the most successful cultural event ever for the town of Paphos but also for Cyprus as country.  Now the CTO board of directors denies to pay the 138,000 euros sponsorship for this last festival.

The Cyprus Tourism Organisation is governed by 9 members assigned by the political parties to run the policies of tourism in Cyprus. The last board of directors has been placed in June 2009 and thank god their term ends in June 2011.

The decision of the board not to pay the 138,000 euros as main sponsorship to the Pafos Aphrodite Festival raised anger and disappointment among the Town Halls and the citizens that form the Pafos Aphrodite Festival initiative. Once again the CTO board acted as if they were the “maharajas” of Cyprus Tourism and Culture. Their excuse was that on the accounts presented to them by the Organising Committee it was included the expenses for the seats. The Opera takes place in front of the  Pafos Castle and in order to perform it is necessary to transform the square into an amphitheatre of approximately 2500 seats. For this reason the Pafos Aphrodite Festival needs to rent the seats.

The CTO board of directors using their brain came to the conclusion that the expenses for renting the seats should not be included in the expenses for organising the festival. 8 out of 9 members (Excluding the Pafian, Cleopatra Mylona ) voted no to the payment of the sponsorship. The board before coming to this wise decision has consulted the Office of the Commissioner for State Aid Control (www.publicaid.gov.cy) who clearly stated that there is no problem to include the expense for the seats in the aid. This means that the 138,000 promised should be paid to Pafos Aphrodite Festival.

The CTO board of Directors has basically omitted the advice given by the commissioner and in “democratic” and “fair” manner they left Pafos basically without the Opera Festival. The sponsorship of the CTO was the most important income for the festival. 

The Opera in Pafos (Paphos) provokes personal data protection Tragedy

The web page of Paphos Festival, the official web site of the festival is promoting “Lakme by Leo Delibes” and on the reservation form the web has on the bottom left you they are asking to the visitor of the web to enter personal data (all of them obligatory) and the data is not protected by secure server. Among this data is the Credit Card details.

What does it mean in simple words this irresponsible and illegal action of the town hall led by Mr. Vergas. This means that you and I as consumers if we enter our data to buy a ticket for the opera our data travel without encryption and they can be stopped by any amateur hacker who will be able to use our credit card details to obtain money or goods.

I am wondering if an official website paid by the citizens of this town is acting in such an irresponsible way how do these gentlemen who run the town expect us to have any kind of respect. Their ignorance and their irresponsibility puts in danger all of us.

Please check by yourself. The web is http://www.pafc.com.cy where the Opera is announced. The link for reservation form is located down left if you click Reservation Form then the web takes you a form that is talking about “Madama Butterfly”, last years opera, they did not have the dignity to change the text on top, which means that all of those people who might booked the opera from this site last year were exposed to serious data protection irregularities. Oh by the way the link Online reservation is not working and I sincerely think it never worked.

I wonder if any official will have the dignity to apologize here on this blog, over facebook , plaxo , linkedin and all the other social media this article is published.

Last but not least the same web regognises "Macedonia" as a Country. I think the next step would be that the Townhall of Paphos should open a consulate in Skopia. See yourself the pull down of the reservation form.

I would like to congratulate once again Mr. Vergas and his fantastic team for being so capable, especially those who made the website and those who paid them. Bravo.