THE GREEN Party celebrated a second victory yesterday, announcing that the Antiquities Department head had announced plans to abandon construction work at the ancient Curium amphitheatre on the south coast.
Their first success came in mid-January when the Greens drummed up enough support for a vote in parliament to freeze the budget for work on the archaeological site. The Antiquities Department had plans to build a large canteen, site museum and car park to cater for the 350,000 tourists and visitors who go to the site each year, but had to stop work when the budget was frozen.
Green Party deputy Georgios Perdikis previously told the Sunday Mail that construction work at the site would endanger the very existence of the archaeological remains.
On Friday the Greens continued their campaign with a demonstration outside the Archaeological Museum. By nightfall, according to Perdikis, Antiquities Department head Sophoclis Hadjisavvvas told Sigma television that he would cancel plans to build a café/restaurant on the site.
In a statement yesterday, the Greens said that Hadjisavvas had asked a few days earlier for parliament to release the funds for construction. They welcomed the new announcement and hoped that a similar solution can be found for tourist development on other archaeological sites that are in danger.
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.
