Dozens of inmates at Cyprus’ central prisons have donated around 9,000 euros ($11,745) to a volunteer clinic in order to help needy families receive free medical attention amid the country’s most severe economic crisis in decades.
The inmates, many of them serving long sentences, raised the cash from the pocket money they’re allowed to keep for purchases at the prisons’ canteen, the Associated Press reported.
Lara Ioannou, whose husband has four years left on a 13-year drug conviction, helped hand the money to Eleni Theocharous, a Cypriot European Parliament member and pediatric surgeon who also runs the country’s first volunteer clinic in the heart of the capital’s medieval center.
Ioannou said inmates thought that access to medical attention is equally important as food as needy families try to weather the country’s financial collapse that was caused when banks made bad loans to Greek businesses that failed in that country’s economic crisis and with their exposure to Greek bonds that were devalued 74 percent.
The government is awaiting a 10 billion euros ($13 billion) bailout and has responded by confiscating up to 80 percent of deposits over 100,000 euros ($130,000) and imposing strict capital controls to limit people’s access to their own money while making them pay for their banks mistakes.
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