Akamas plan to go to Cabinet

THE AGRICULTURE Ministry will submit its plan for the Akamas peninsula to the next Cabinet meeting, Minister Photis Photiou announced yesterday.

“The preparation is complete, the proposal is complete and we are ready to discuss it at the Cabinet”, Photiou told reporters after meeting with the European Parliament’s Committee for the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.

According to Photiou, the plan will benefit the area’s population, but also the entire Cypriot public and tourists visiting Cyprus.

The government has been under pressure from the residents in Akamas, who want development in the area, to resolve a problem that successive governments have failed to deal with and which has been going on for nearly 20 years.

“We will invest many millions of pounds in significant substructure works,” he said, explaining that the plan did not just include development projects or the protection of areas, but also environmental centres and youth centres.

He said there would be “mild developments” with small traditional hotels and taverns, but stressed that a protection zone would be set, “within which we will strictly forbid any form of development in order to protect the environment”.

The minister pointed out that the government had reached an agreement with private land owners of vast properties in the peninsula, who were given the options of exchange or compensation.
“If we have private land owners in this protected area, you understand that this isn’t the best thing,” Photiou stated.

He added that work would begin as soon as possible, after the plan is approved by the Cabinet, but pointed out that the entire project would need more than one or two years to be completed.

“There are so many activities, so many things that need to be done. We have set time limits that must be met, but the important thing is that this project, which has been discussed for so many years, is finally going to be realised and Akamas’ organisation will begin immediately”, the minister concluded.

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.