IT OUGHT to be one of Cyprus’ prime resorts, nestled away on the north coast over the hill from Paphos, far from the madding crowds and tacky tourist traps. But Polis is failing to live up to its potential, if local businessmen are to be believed, with growing frustration at the failure to take the kind of decisions that will revitalise the town.
Philippos Michael, 38, owns a café-bar and souvenir shop. His patience has run out: “I have stopped attending council meetings. It’s a total waste of time. The committee vote on a decision then nothing is ever done; there’s no follow through, and worse, there’s no form of accounting for all these decisions that just end up dying.
“When they do eventually make their collective minds up, it rarely has anything to do with putting something back into the community.
“There must be over 250 motions that have been passed by the municipality, and I reckon only about 20 of them have been put into practice, really interesting decisions like paying thousands of pounds for a well-known singer to perform for one night, or the agreement to hold various commercial fiestas, when what we desperately need is modern road-sweeping machinery, a moratorium on private building, cleaning up of the beaches and the sea beds, urgent repair of three historical houses that have been burnt out for five years – these are a serious hazard to the public, a disaster waiting to happen,” he warned.
Michail condemned the attitude that seemed to govern people’s lives in Polis.
“Look at the beach-cleaning equipment, money was made available for it, but we haven’t been able to use it as there is a piece broken, one and a half years later no one has had the initiative to send off for a replacement part.
“Portable toilets that were brought in were stored during the winter, and when the season started in the spring, they were not distributed around the beach areas because someone had forgotten to contact the contract cleaning company, with the result we didn’t have toilet facilities in place until the beginning of July, and we are a beach resort!
“There is no sense of priorities here. I just give up.”
Marios Chrysanthou, 32, a local restaurant owner and elected member of the council was equally fed up.
“I see all this happening at the meetings and it’s embarrassing to say the least. We don’t seem to have grasped the main issue here in Polis, which is that we are a tourist destination, a beach holiday place for families and we are going the wrong way to promote this.
“What was once a jewel of a place, is a shabby old stone that has started to crumble from many years of neglect and bad planning, and a total lack of any professional implementation measures.
“Basically, if you are from the right party then you can easily get something done for yourself, it might not be good for the rest of the community but you will be given permission. It’s a selfish mentality which is a 100 years out of date.
“The point is we are slowly killing the place for tourists because we have no real voice, no money, nepotism, and inexperienced people dealing with short-term solutions for our long-term problems.”
Kyriacos Cleanthous is manager of the Lovers Nest Apartments and the most outspoken regarding the lack of promotion and community management of the area.
“We are losing out in every way possible: tourists are being told by travel companies that Polis is fully booked when it’s in fact empty. Why? Because big tour operators don’t come here any more, so anyone wanting a holiday here will be hard pressed to get one if they try and book via an agent who has removed Polis from their programme, preferring to direct clients to other destinations, places where they have their own run hotels and apartments.
“We haven’t got the money to fight that. For tourism to be resurrected here, Polis needs money thrown at it by highly-skilled professional marketing people, not amateur politicians who know less about public relations and marketing than my butcher.
“We also suffer from the huge numbers of unlicensed villa rentals, and no one clamps down on these people.
“We are only a small community, around 2,500 citizens, and it seems as if there is one clear objective and that’s for us to close our doors as a tourist destination, to then open another in order to turn the area into one big residential complex for retirement and holiday villas.
“Our current situation is everyone’s fault: we should all now be working together to solve these problems, not going off doing our own thing in a selfish manner. We should be working as a team to help make changes happen for the good of everyone in our community.”
