Energy saving campaign for Nicosia

A CAMPAIGN to save electricity in the capital is to be launched shortly, Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides announced yesterday.

Paschalides was speaking after a meeting with the municipalities of Nicosia and the Electricity Authority of Cyprus to discuss ways in which cutbacks could be made.

“If you look at the accounts you see that the cost of road lighting translates into huge amounts of money,” he said, adding that by making savings, energy consumption could also be cut down.

Paschalides said all the officials agreed there was scope to save more electricity in the capital.

To get the ball rolling, a memorandum has been prepared which all the capital’s municipalities will sign, making a commitment to the cutbacks.

Each municipality is also invited to make its own suggestions, Paschalides said.

“There is political will on the part of the Ministry of Commerce to support all municipalities in this major effort to save energy,” the Minister said.

This could involve the provision of new technology that would eliminate waste, he added.

The cutbacks could start as early as two months time, Paschalides said.

He also said the meeting had discussed issues such as the lack of co-ordination of ongoing works around the city, which has resulted in traffic chaos.

“We discussed how better to co-ordinate how to handle major works so we can have much better results than we’ve seen so far,” said Paschalides.

He said at the moment the EAC was working on its own initiative and moving from municipality to municipality without any co-ordination between the latter.

“We must stop doing things like this,” the Minister said.

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