Fine hike

ILLEGAL parkers will be forking out £50 instead of £15 following last month’s Cabinet decision to increase the fine.

The £35 increase will apply to all 24 municipalities throughout the island, CyBC television reported last night.

Nicosia’s Strovolos municipality has already started implementing the more stringent penalty. According to Strovolos’ mayor the new fine would send out the right message to drivers and to a large extent the problem of illegal parking would be reduced, particularly for those drivers had access to designated parking lots yet preferred to park on the pavements or on double yellow lines.

But despite the measure’s effectiveness the government would have to implement more actions to solve the road network problem.

“We have to realise that as long as the number of privately owned cars on our streets are not reduced because commuters have no other options, such as buses or trains as abroad, some people will continue to pay these hefty fines.”

According to CyBC, traffic police and other municipalities have already started implementing the new law. At this stage offenders are being given warnings but soon all municipalities will implement the cabinet decision.

New UN man

PRESIDENT Tassos Papadopoulos yesterday met with the United Nations’ new special representative to Cyprus and head of the island’s Peace Corps UNFICYP, Michael Moller.
Moller took on active duty on January 4, replacing Zbigniew Wlosowicz. Till the present he had been the UN Secretary-general’s acting Assistant Chef de Cabinet. He has also headed political, peacekeeping and humanitarian cases for the UN Secretary-general’s executive office. No statements were made following the meeting.

Retail heist

THIEVES MADE off with £15,000 worth of televisions, stereos and other electrical appliances after they broken into a company warehouse in Kofinou during the early hours of yesterday morning. Company owner, Andreas Charalambous, reported the theft to police and also reported cheques and cash missing.

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.