RESIDENTS of Peyia on the outskirts of Paphos are furious with the local authorities over local services they call a shambles, as well as over poorly planned works that have left the town in a mess. They also say pleas to the municipality have fallen on deaf ears.
In April, residents were left without mail delivery after the only postman in the area resigned. They had to rummage through stacks of mail piled up at the local Co-op to locate their letters.
Over the past 10 years, delivery of the mail gradually decreased from daily to twice a week: now it is delivered on Sunday by the owner of a local coffee shop.
Although the mail is now being delivered, Peyia residents often receive other people’s post by mistake, and they also complaining of a lack of security in the delivery of packages, bills and bank statements.
One resident told the Sunday Mail the situation was getting out of control.
“I get 20 letters every time which are not addressed to me and I have to go around trying to find the person they belong to,” the resident said.
“It’s ridiculous, we get bills lost, packages torn up, and bank statements never get here. Each month I have to call all the people I owe money to and ask them to fax me the bills because I didn’t get them in the mail.
“I have a business to run and its day-to-day running is being messed up by the post office. They lose VAT statements and bank statements: how am I supposed to run my business?”
But post is not the only problem: “The electricity gets cut off, the water gets cut off … we had to flush our toilets with drinking water last week and the local authorities couldn’t tell us where the problem was,” the resident said.
“The rubbish service is also appalling: they don’t have regular times to collect rubbish, they just let it pile up and then come to collect it.”
Even driving in the village has become a task in itself, after the municipality decided to resurface the roads by putting new tarmac on the old, leaving huge potholes where the manhole covers are.
“Peyia has become a dump. We have one of the most beautiful villages here but appalling services. Frankly I wonder how they expect people to want to live here,” the resident said.
The Paphos Post Office has rejected complaints about deliveries, saying there are two postmen assigned to Peyia and that the problem was being solved.
“The addresses get mixed up and because there are so many foreigners there sometimes the addresses are written down wrongly and the postmen get confused,” a spokesman said.
“But the problem is being solved. It’s better than it used to be and it will be solved soon.”
