Pressures rise on Paphos Mayor over water

PAPHOS Municipality has come under further pressure for its refusal to impose water cuts on the town, while the rest of Cyprus struggles with limited supplies.

With reservoirs almost empty, the Water Development Department has cut supply to water boards by 30 per cent. All have passed the cuts on to household, except Paphos town, which is making up the shortfall with water from boreholes, even while surrounding suburbs and villages are going thirsty.

Paphos Mayor Savvas Vergas yesterday again insisted the water problem would not be solved with water cuts by the Municipality. “They are trying to blame Paphos because of trying a different method to solve the water crisis in order to forget about who is to blame for how we ended up in the crisis in the first place,” he said yesterday.

But Larnaca Mayor Andreas Moiseos yesterday criticised Vergas for his policy. He said the Paphos Mayor was “undermining” other municipalities by somehow suggesting that their cuts were down to shortcomings in planning. Paphos covers its water needs with large quantities of water from their boreholes, which are not available to towns like Larnaca and Nicosia.

Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis said yesterday it was urgent to created a “unified water-handling authority as soon as possible for a common policy and to stop the over-consumption of water from boreholes and dams… There is a need for co-operation and equal responsibility and the ‘finders keepers’ mentality where water is concerned has to stop. Water belongs to everyone and everyone should gain from this.”

The Agriculture Ministry said yesterday it imposed strictly the decisions of the Cabinet cutting 30 per cent in all districts without the possibility of any municipality or Waterboard increasing the quantity. But Minister Michalis Polynikis said that, “The Ministry is not able to control whether a municipality of water board ‘steals’ from private boreholes. This falls under the jurisdiction of the district authorities that authorise the boreholes in the communities and municipalities.”

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