By Poly Pantelides
A SEVERELY damaged segment of road between Polis and Kathikas in the Paphos district has been left to deteriorate for months and is now deeply cracked, semi-collapsed and dangerous although still in daily use.
A resident of the village of Tera who has to use the road every day has been documenting the steady deterioration for months. Speaking to the Sunday Mail, the 57-year-old man who did not want to be named, said an acquaintance of his told him the communications minister had promised repair the road and work was due to have started two weeks ago. Yet on Friday when the local resident posted his latest photos on Facebook nothing had been done. “My life and other people’s lives are in danger every day,” the Tera resident said. Communications minister Tasos Mitsopoulos could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The road is on a turn, and the crack now appears to be spreading across the few warning cones that had been placed there. The public works department has allegedly cited delays with tenders’ procedures as delaying works but the Terra resident said that every winter the same road presents problems with cracks getting patched up but reappearing the following year.
Photographs taken in May show part of the collapsed road segment – still there months later.
Frustrated, the Tera resident spent some 20 minutes documenting the road’s deteriorating state towards the end of the week.
Among the dozen of pictures the same resident has posted on his Facebook page, is a picture of a bus from just a few days ago which he said was carrying 50 to 60 people. “We could very easily have another Mari,” he said referring to the July 11 munitions’ blast which killed 13 people, in what a court has recently called “a universal unacceptable and outrageous dysfunction of the political and administrative system”.
The Tera resident said he had spent a lot of time chasing people up to find which government body had responsibility for the road. It turned out that as a road connecting different communities, the segment’s upkeep was the responsibility of the public works department rather than any of the area’s local authorities. “It’s a miracle we haven’t mourned any victims,” he said.
