By Anthony O. Miller
THE SIT-IN by several dozen water-sports operators at the Presidential Palace ended yesterday after two ministers agreed to meet with their union representative, Demetris Hadjidemetriou, the new president of the Cyprus Water Sports Association, said.
“We decided to take our boats and leave the Palace,” Hadjidemetriou told the Cyprus Mailaround noon yesterday, saying Communications & Works Minister Leontios Ierodiaconou and Commerce & Tourism Minister Nicos Rolandis had agreed to meet with the water-sports operators later this week.
The decision to leave came a day after a street blockade by some 200 water- sports operators, who massed boats, jet-skis, trailers and trucks outside the Palace before camping out there overnight for what they threatened would be an open-ended bivouac.
Their departure yesterday from the park outside the Palace walls also ended an indefinite strike of all water-sports rentals by most of the operators on the island.
Hadjidemetriou said key to their departure were meetings between Melios Georgiou, General Secretary of Povek (the Union of Small Businessmen and Retailers representing the water-sports operators) and two officials close to President Glafcos Clerides.
He said Georgiou had managed to talk to Presidential Secretary Nicos Panayiotou and Undersecretary to the President Pantelis Kouros in the Presidential Palace yesterday.
“Kouros promised him to contact Ierodiaconou” to arrange for a meeting between the two men “because he believed there are grounds to discuss the problem and settle it.”
Hadjidemetriou said Ierodiaconou was also at the Palace yesterday, and had agreed to talk today with Georgiou about the new regulations the water- sports operators say are driving them out of business. He also said Georgiou had been promised a meeting on Friday with Rolandis.
“I saw Ierodiaconou (at the Palace) and we arranged for a meeting on Wednesday at 11.30am,” Georgiou told the Cyprus Mail.
Georgiou said he had been given “no assurances” by Ierodiaconou, Kouros or Panayiotou. “The most important people who can solve the problem are Mr Rolandis and Mr Ierodiaconou,” he said. “We have to meet with them and discuss the situation, and ask them to solve the problem.”
One new regulation ordered by Ierodiaconou moves water-sports rental sites away from their accustomed hotel swimming areas, and out to the margins of the island’s swimming beaches.
Another change, mandated in a new law passed by Parliament, reduces the hours of water-sports operation to 10am-1pm and 4pm-7pm. Under the old rules, they used to run from sunrise to sunset.
The rule changes are the government’s reaction to at least three jet-ski accidents last year that killed one British tourist and seriously injured three others.
The water-sports operators had been threatening to shut down all their rentals on the island and camp outside the Presidential Palace until the government ceased enforcing the rules moving their rental sites.
