THE INTERIOR Minister is due to visit the area of Pissouri where an ongoing landslide has destroyed dozens of homes on Thursday morning.
Elina Zoi, the lawyer for a group of the affected homeowners, confirmed that Constantinos Petrides, the Minister of the Interior, would be visiting Pissouri to meet with the lawyer and local authorities, and view the crumbling homes for himself.
“The plan is to walk around the affected area with the local community leader and see the destruction of the homes ahead of a lunchtime meeting to discuss the problems,” she told the Cyprus Mail on Monday.
It is unclear if the Minister will actually meet with any of the homeowners, although this is something they are hoping for.
Petrides’ visit was originally scheduled for Monday and then pushed to Tuesday, before being rescheduled for Thursday at 11am, ‘to allow him to spend more time in Pissouri’, said Zoi.
The Minister will first meet with the community leader ahead of a site visit and lunch meeting, which will also be attended by the Limassol District Officer, the Director of the Geological Survey Department, the Community Leader, members of the Community Board and other staff of the Minister of the Interior, she said.
Many of the affected homes have virtually collapsed, the result of a continuous and accelerating landslip and many homes are now deemed unfit for habitation. Homes and gardens are ripped apart, walls and pools are collapsing and roads split, buckled and impassable.
Desperate homeowners have long pleaded with the government for help, but to no avail. In 2015 the then Minister of the Interior, Socratis Hasikos, said it was the government’s duty to intervene, but since his resignation in May 2017, no action has been taken.
In April, the Auditor-General Odysseas Michaelides announced that the government should not essentially assume responsibly and compensate as it would set a precedent.
No insurance company will insure against landslide damage and the properties were all built by different developers.
One of the affected homeowners, Peter Field, speaking to the Cyprus Mail on Monday, said that residents are concerned whether the site visit will take place at all and that the minster may only be shown specific areas where recent, hurried repairs were carried out on roads, which had become impassable.
“Some work has been done to try and make it ‘look good’ and patched up, but it’s impossible as the destruction of homes, gardens and walls is all too obvious. They are collapsing,” he said.
Field said that homeowners had not been given any details of the impending visit by the local council and only learned of it via the community boards’ Facebook page.
“We are not going to demonstrate as we would like to have the chance to meet the Minister, show him what the situation is, calmly talk and explain,” said Field, adding that he didn’t know if this would be possible.
“It’s a practical way to show him the humanitarian aspect of our situations. We were evicted from our home over four years ago. There has been no interaction, and no help, or concern at all,” he said.
Really speaking directly with the minister will not change whatever plan he has up his sleeve, if in fact there is any. I am 99.9 percent sure he knows how bad it is and the devastating affect it has on everyone’s lives.
The best that can be done is to me is to maintain or somehow escalate the pressure directly or indirectly on the govt.
Are there any precedents for positions like this .
The AG is making a big thing about responsibility
Whatever happened to a “without prejudice” offer of compensation?
Does anyone know, for example, how the government reacted in instances like the Stroumbi earthquake ?
I really am tired of this perpetual blame game and kicking the can up the road (they’d make great Uk politicians)
Surely it would be better to be known as the Administration who found a solution to this crisis instead of ducking below the parapet whenever it appears.
Politicians are meant to serve 5he people. This is no fault of the residents. A humanitarian approach to what is in essence a national problem for Cyprus and it’s people, wouldn’t go amiss.
SUpporting The people of Pissouri is not going to garner any negative (electoral) comments.
Quite the reverse. People would take the-view that a government which is trying to resolve this is working in th3 interests of its population/ electorate
What an absolute disgrace that these houses were allowed to be built. They should never have been given planning permission. I bet every local in the village knew it was a danger. The same happened in Marathounda, a development of flats took place and all the locals knew it was a danger hotspot due to mudslides, yet it was still given planning permission. Any decent surveyor would of known this. Brown envelopes all round no other explanation.
Ed: If the local villagers knew it was a dangerous area, why have so many of them built their homes there? The reality is that the land was rezoned as residential in the early 1980s. The ancient prehistoric landslide has been triggered by unmanaged underground water – and the European Commission has taken Cyprus to the European Court of Justice for its failure to properly treat urban waste water.