PROFITS are down and tempers high as the road works plough on in Limassol, this time on the opposite side of the road to the main tourist thoroughfare, dubbed The Strip.
The government and the municipality are footing the £2.4 million bill to bulldoze the road in order to install a sewage drainage system, cables for street lighting, pave the pavements and widen the road into a dual carriageway.
Gaping trenches scar 1.6km of road; bulldozers, dust and mounds of rubble have surrounded a string of top class hotels on the sea front.
Construction work has finished on the south side, but the diggers have crossed the road to dig the north side, outraging shopkeepers and restaurant owners who are seeing their businesses strangled.
One chef told the Cyprus Mail that his takings had been hammered by the construction work.
“I used to make £1,000 a day, mainly from tourists; £600 at lunch and £400 for dinner. Now I’m down to 15 to 20 guests every night. I’m making peanuts,” he said.
“People can walk up to my door, but they have to dodge holes in the ground. It’s dangerous for children and wheelchair access is impossible,” he added.
Too frightened to give his name, he said the authorities would make trouble for him if he talked to the media.
Instead he is arguing with his business partner over whether to close until the bulldozers leave.
One souvenir shop manager said dust from the rubble was ruining his stock of clothes and swimwear, displayed inside, but vulnerable next to an open window.
“First they said they’d finish at the end of May, now it’s the first week of August, but I doubt it. Nobody listens to us. Of course I’m angry,” he said.
“I’ve complained many times. The municipality only listens. They promise, promise, promise, but its only promises. You can’t say anything in Cyprus,” said the chef.
Limassol’s reputation took a denting when the BBC travel programme Wish You Were Here? exposed the ugliness and massive inconvenience of the road works to tourists.
But the municipality, the government and the Cyprus Tourism Organisation yesterday brushed aside the discontent.
“We only had complaints during the first few days. Now they’re used to it and people are anxious to co-operate in order finish as soon as possible,” said the Chairman of the Ayios Tychonas Community Board, Pambos Ioannou.
He said they were working full speed. Some 17 diggers were in action with three teams of workmen working from 7am to 6pm with half an hour lunch break and perhaps the odd 10-minute rest.
“Accessibility is now much better for the hotels on the coast,” said chief executive engineer for design Dr Andreas Papasozomenos.
He denied that tourism was at risk, because the intended deadline of July comes “before” the season gets in full swing.
But the deadline has now pushed to early August, with Communications Minister Averoff Neophytou due to open the polished stretch of road on August 11.
Road works will start again on October 1 and run to at least January 30 2002, as two 1.2km stretches of the same road get the same treatment – one side at a time.
Ioannou said the stretches ran from Milia Court to the link up with the main road into Limassol and from the Atlantica Bay Hotel to the Elias Beach Hotel.
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.
