Larnaca crane dispute is back

By Charlie Charalambous

THE CRANE dispute at Larnaca marina, which grounded hundreds of yachts earlier this year, has come back to haunt the CTO following a court decision yesterday.

In March, the Cyprus Mail exposed the chaos at the marina, which involved the owners of two cranes locked in a tender row with the CTO.

For two months, boats were stranded on dry land and in the water when the previous crane contractor, Manolis Kranidiotis, failed to make way for the new one who had been due to take over the contract on January 1, 1998.

Prompted by the Cyprus Mail report on the situation, newly-appointed Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis personally intervened and called in the police to remove the offending crane.

But the thorny issue of crane tenders came back to haunt the marina yesterday, when a Larnaca court issued a temporary order for Kranidiotis to return to the fray.

Although the CTO said that Kranidiotis’ tender had expired at the end of last year, he contested the decision to award the contract to someone else.

In an attempt to solve the issue, the CTO filed for a temporary order to have the old crane removed to allow the new contractor to sort out the backlog.

However, Kranidiotis also filed for a court order against the CTO to allow him to continue at the marina until the legal complications were resolved.

Judge Marios Georgiou decided in favour of Kranidiotis, criticising the behaviour of the CTO, for calling in the police before securing an injunction order, and said that all pre-conditions under the law had been met by the plaintiff.

What happens next in this sorry saga is anybody’s guess.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.