Dali residents seek relocation of two factories

Residents of an area in Dali near two industrial units called on the government on Wednesday to offer compensation to the factory owners to relocate as the air pollution is affecting their health.

Four years after first appearing before the House environment committee on the same issue, a delegation of residents of the Constantinou and Elenis parish in Dali told MPs that the government has yet to act on their complaints concerning the air pollution caused by the two industrial units in their area.

The head of the delegation, Giorgos Olympiou, said after the committee meeting that despite their actions during the past four years, the government had done nothing.

State services, he said, made measurements indicating that the air quality in the area was satisfactory, but these measurements were fragmented and did not identify the problem.

He added that the empirical observations of the residents, however, identified two factories which “emit fumes into the homes and rooms of our children”.

Olympiou also said that residents of the wider area have made two demands, one concerning compensation to the management of the two industrial units to relocate, the other for the declassification as industrial zones of the remaining zones in Geri and Tseri, which surround their parish.

At the moment, he said, five industrial zones in the area surround 6,000 residents. The area in question, he said, could accommodate 30,000 to 35,000 inhabitants.

If the state does not compensate the two industrialists and get them to agree to relocate, he said, “in five to 10 years the problem will be tenfold because it will affect people’s health at a higher cost to the state.”