Omodos mukhtar Evgenios Michael on Friday said he is “satisfied” with the rate of progress being made by the government in its efforts to help the Limassol district in light of a wildfire which tore through it last month.
Speaking after a meeting with Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou, he said that since President Nikos Christodoulides met local mukhtars and announced “support measures” four days after the fire broke out, “everything we agreed upon has been implemented very quickly”.
“Where there is a problem, we say so, but let the good things be said, too,” he said.
He added that workers from the agriculture department have been working “non-stop”, and that the water development department’s response has been “similar”.
Additionally, he said he had raised “other serious issues” with Panayiotou on Friday, including the issue of the cleaning of streambeds, given that at present, village councils do not have the authority to clean them.
“Solutions must be found for this issue because the villages cannot help and cannot clean the streambeds on their own,” he said, adding that Panayiotou had said at the meeting that solutions would be found.
Asked if his village would flood if it rained due to the lack of cleaning of the streambeds, he said Omodos will not flood, but that where streams pass through other villages, “there will certainly be problems”.
He then spoke about the matter of the “reactivation plans” which had been announced by the agriculture ministry last week, and expressed his satisfaction that the deadline was on Friday pushed back from the originally planned August 22 to September 15.
“We wanted to be given time because we want all the burnt land which was vineyards or orchards to be replanted,” he said.
Click here to change your cookie preferences