Paphos fury at decade of inaction over stone crushing plant
THE HOUSE environment committee yesterday hit out at state services for allowing a nuisance stone crushing plant to operate within a Paphos residential area for almost a decade.
"This is insulting behaviour from the state towards its citizens, we should all be ashamed," committee chairman Demetris Eliades protested. "Rarely have I felt so strongly about a phenomenon, one that has been going on for 10 years and which this committee has been hearing the same thing about for four years," Eliades said.
People living around the massive plant in Chlorakas told the committee they could stand the dust and noise no more and had had enough of empty promises that the unit would be moved.
"What do we have to do?" an exasperated Charalambos Antoniades, the residents’ spokesman, demanded of the government officials attending yesterday’s committee session.
"I have not been able to use my home for the past 10 years… not even animals are treated like this."
Antoniades said plant operators never stuck to regulations for limiting dust and noise levels.
Environment Service officer Andreas Hadjipanayiotis agreed, saying the plant was "the biggest anarchic activity I have seen in my 10 years with the service".
Hadjipanayiotis said he had been shocked by what he had seen when he visited the site on Monday. "I am ashamed as a citizen of what I saw yesterday. There was dust lying three centimetres deep outside nearby homes."
"I know all of Cyprus’ mines and I have never seen such a place, there is no way to improve it," Hadjipanayiotis added.
Paphos deputy George Hadjigeorgiou, of Akel, said local residents were forced to tape their windows shut in an effort to keep the dust out.
In reply to this barrage of criticism, Paphos District Officer Nicos Roussos said negotiations to agree a compensation deal with plant owners to close down the stone-crushing unit were almost at an end. He promised the committee a deal would be reached by next month.
The District Officer agreed that the plant was an "unbearable nuisance" and said owners were being taken to court for operating without approval, illegal additions to the plant and dangerous constructions.
Hadjigeorgiou was not impressed, predicting that the nothing would happen and the committee would again be examining an unchanged situation come next summer.
Plant owner Nearchos Eliades told the committee he had no comment to make.
The plant was built before the area became residential. It later closed down but was re-opened in 1991, despite mushrooming housing development. A 1992 demolition order against additions to the plant has never been carried out.
The issue has been before the committee for four years now, without discernible progress. In 1998, the committee was told that the plant would have to go to make way for a new road. But the road later turned out not to be crossing the plant’s path.
