Greens plan Limassol car park protest

A LOCAL Green organisation plans to stage a protest today at the Makarios Avenue site earmarked for a multi-storey car park in central Limassol.

In a statement issued yesterday, the Ecological Movement said its members and local residents would picket the site in a protest beginning at 9am, to complain about the traffic chaos they claim the car park will bring to the city.

But Limassol municipality hit back at the Green claims, with Town clerk Christos Michael claiming Limassol desperately needed the car park to solve its huge illegal parking problems.

The streets were, he said, lined with illegally parked cars, and this was simply because anyone coming into the centre of the town, be it to shop or visit the post office, water board or any other official building had to park somewhere.

The municipality, he added, had looked at other possible solutions, but had found the car park to be the best solution.

Pedestrianisation and busses as suggested by the Greens had been considered, he said, but were not felt to be viable because of the prevailing car culture in Cyprus. Mass re-education would be needed to implement this solution, he concluded.

Michael also refuted claims that the municipality had not studied the environmental situation around the site, saying they had had the possible impact studied both by local and overseas specialists, including experts from France, Spain and the United States.

The cost of the car park, he added, was expected to reach about £500,000, and not £1 million as alleged by the Greens. The multi-storey parking lot will be built by a private company.

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.