HEALTH Minister Frixos Savvides said yesterday the future of the Nemitsas foundry in Limassol lay with the findings of the Labour Ministry technical committee on whether emissions from the foundry were within EU limits.
The emission tests were carried out after residents around the foundry complained that children at a nearby school were inhaling gases which contained lethal chemicals.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Savvides said the technical committee would present the Cabinet with the results of the emissions tests today.
“We will have a Cabinet meeting, at which I am sure there will be a briefing by the technical committee, who have determined whether the limits of emissions are within the limits set by the European Union,” Savvides said.
“Samples of the emissions they took were examined by the state laboratory and have been submitted to the technical committee, and now they must decide whether these are within the limits required by the EU or not.”
Savvides said that, based on the results, the government would start looking at two possible options.
“If the foundry’s emissions are within acceptable EU limits then we shall have to see some other way of dealing with the matter through negotiations, with the residents,” Savvides said.
“If it is not within the limits then we will be actually giving notice and asking the foundry to relocate.”
The Minister insisted that, whatever happened, the government would take the matter up as soon as they have official confirmation of where they stood.
“Rest assured that if there is an issue of unacceptable limits in the foundry’s emissions, we will do our outmost to find a final solution to the problem and that is to find a way to move the foundry, whether we can do it by actually taking legal action against them or by negotiating with the Nemitsas people to leave,” Savvides said.
A spokesman of the parents’ association in Limassol, Kyriacos Valanides, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday parents were seriously considering not sending their children to school this year.
“They can study at home,” he said. “I will not risk my child’s health by sending it to school, where it will breathe those chemicals.”
Valanides said if the technical committee’s findings showed that the level of emissions from the foundry were within acceptable levels, the parents would be happy if Nemitsas operated in the afternoons, when their children were not at school.
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.
