I wonders if the authorities are up to the job to carry out their duties for the benefit of Cyprus and its people. The examples that I often provide are not the full list of oddities and there are other numerous and shocking events.
I will report some of them that we were involved with based on our own experience.
Let’s start with the most shocking experience, that of the Paralimni Municipality.
According to the Mayor, the Municipality was licensed by the government to use a state owned beach plot, within the seashore protection zone (meaning that nothing can be built on it) for its own use as a kiosk.
What a kiosk is, as we all know, is a small building to sell newspapers, perhaps ice-creams and juices. The municipality duly sub-leased the plot and the new sub tenant, has provided the facilities of a grill bar, and advertises the establishment as such, including signs for selling food, alcoholic drinks, in addition to a sign stating that this set up was duly licensed and with all permits available.
We know that this was far from true (it has no building license at all and none from the Tourist Authorities), with the latter telling us that the establishment is operating illegally. For this we have submitted a complaint to the Municipality, the District Office, the Ministry of Commerce, the Auditor General and the Ombudsman.
Not in charge
Whereas the District Officer responded that he cannot intervene because he is not the authority in charge to issue the planning permits, he added that he wrote to the Mayor who did not even bother to reply.
End result, the kiosk-snack bar is still in place. No action, as yet, by the self-promoting Auditor General, nor from the others to whom we submitted the complaint to, even though the Auditor General said ”we will call you back”.
The Paralimni Municipality is now under investigation by the Auditor General and we also expect the answer by the Lands Office whether in fact this plot (and others) have in fact been let.
So why do we have these authorities that cannot or will not undertake their duties?
Then there is the government which in its effort to keep check of the ever-rising rents, has introduced an incentive programme in order to increase supply and thus reduced the ill effects of the restricted supply.
We wrote to the Ministry of Interior that the incentives given were wrong and they will not reach the required goal, and we now have the admission by the chairman of the governmental body involved with this development confirming that the incentives did not work.
So, after almost two years from our observation and notwithstanding the so-called advisor to the Republic (the Technical Chamber of Cyprus) on the subject, we are back to square one.
If we look into the football hooligans and corruption, this is an issue that has been going on for years. Yet we even had a new corruption incident last year, with the supervising football authority doing absolutely nothing. Even the hooligans seem to have the support of some MPs, to abolish the ID card for those attending games in an effort to keep control.
A country that aspires to become an international financial centre and a first-class holiday destination, these and numerous other incidents do not go unpublished in other countries.
Just as well we have E.U. “supervision” to tell us off, but then we base our local income on real estate sales/development, and we lure foreign buyers in particular to believe that we are a good country to live in.
