LIMASSOL Mayor Demitris Kontides is furious with police chief Andreas Angelides for lifting a ban imposed by the Limassol Municipality on lorry drivers using certain roads in Zakaki.
Kontides told the Cyprus Mail yesterday the police chief had acted without consulting the city council.
Kontides said Angelides’ decision to suspend the ban in the mornings would simply cause more problems as furious residents were now planning to block Paros Street on Monday, in retaliation.
There are three schools on the road, which leads to the Ypsonas industrial area, and locals fear that lorries will put their children in danger.
On Wednesday, Angelides agreed to truckers’ demands to use the roads between 9am and midday, when children would be at school.
“This turn of events has complicated things. We have done everything within our power to find a solution to the problem created between the two sides,” Kontides said.
“But due to the intervention of certain individuals who have no direct involvement with the problem, and I mean the Chief of police who lifted the ban, I believe this will further complicate things.”
The Mayor said he had no idea the Chief would act the way he did and was furious that he had not been advised as the local authority in the city.
“He came here, lifted the ban, up to this minute he has not even informed us on what is happening and we are the local authority.
It is unconstitutional,” the Mayor said.
The Mayor said that if it wasn’t for his efforts, the Zakaki community would have never agreed to allow access to one of the key routes, Serifos Street, even though the offer was promptly rejected by the truck drivers, who insisted they wanted all the roads opened.
Kontides said he would now have to start all over again.
“We had the drivers protesting and now we have the Zakaki people protesting, because their children are in danger. Any clear sighted man would see these things coming, so we had to insist on a solution that would be beneficial to both sides.”
According to Kontides, the roads are not able to sustain continuous use by heavy goods vehicles because they are narrow and they are not paved.
The mayor said it was the government’s fault that the two sides were fighting today, and blamed the lack of proper roads to and from the port on bad management and bad planning.
“The crime was committed by the government. The Port was built 30 years ago, but plans to build a four-lane road to accommodate traffic have been shelved. This road should have been built then. There is only one road leading to the harbour,” Kontides said.
“The answer to the problem is peaceful negotiations,” he added, “not the arbitrary lifting of an order of the city council by the Chief of Police without our consent.”
But Comminications and Works Minister Averoff Neophytou said his department had nothing to do with the problem.
Neophytou said he was not the Justice Minister and local problems were expected to be solved by local authorities.
“Let him (the mayor) solve it. Are Mayors there only for the sake of being elected? We promised them that the roads would be ready in 14 months,” Neophytou said.
The minister said Mayor Kontides should act for his municipality.
“He, as the local authority, should sort the problem out with the truckers and the locals,” Neophytou said.
Residents plan to block Paros Street in protest on Monday. They will open it again on Tuesday as the House will be discussing the issue, but Bambos Charalambous said that they would block it indefinitely on Wednesday should there be dead end in the talks.
“We are worried about the safety of our children, and we do not appreciate the fact that the Chief of Police just decided to cancel a city council order, without our consent”, he told the Cyprus Mail.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
