PAPHOS is running out of burial space, with the town’s only cemetery built in the 1930s no longer able to sustain the booming local population, district officer Dr Andreas Christodoulides warned yesterday.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail, Christodoulides said the local cemetery was so crammed that the dead were being buried one on top of the other and the local authorities were desperately trying to find land suitable for the construction of a new burial round since the old one could no longer be extended.
“Unfortunately the situation is a little critical at the moment,” he said.
“We have run of space and because the cemetery is built in a populated area we can’t extend it, and we can’t tell people to stop dying until we find a new space.”
Christodoulides said the local population had increased so rapidly that the cemetery could no longer sustain it.
“If you think that back when the cemetery was built there were less than 5,000 people living in Paphos and then look at the numbers today, you can see why the situation is so critical,” he said.
“The population in Paphos town in 1992 was 19,449 but by 2001 it had increased to a staggering 26,252, and this is just in the space of 10 years.”
Locals have complained that the boundaries of the existing cemetery have reached their porches and were furious with the local authorities for not being able to find a solution to the problem since it first arose two years ago.
But Christodoulides said that although three areas had been examined for the construction of the new cemetery things weren’t as easy as they first thought they would be.
“There are three plots of land that have their advantages and disadvantages,” he said.
“One of the cemeteries is simply too far away, in Fasoula and although the ground is good and it would be a good place to build the cemetery, I don’t think people would be happy about travelling that distance to bury their dead.
“There is also the problem of people not wanting cemeteries built next to their homes, for reasons of superstition, and they also claim that the cemetery would devalue their property,” Christodoulides added.
“However, there are 50 scales of government property in Achelia and we have discussed the possibility of building the cemetery there with the Ministry of Agriculture, but we now have to wait for a study to be carried out to see what the cost of the cemetery would be and whether the ground is adequate for burial.
“I don’t want to sound pessimistic but I don’t see the issue being resolved in the next three months anyway.”
