The government has received more than 500 applications from farmers and livestock breeders for financial aid in the form of “reactivation plans” in the wake of the wildfire which tore through the Limassol district last month, Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou said on Friday.

Speaking after a meeting with mukhtars of fire-affected villages in the Limassol district, which was held in Omodos, she said the measures announced by the government have thus far “received a positive response” from farmers and added that local mukhtars are “also contributing significantly to the smooth running of all the procedures”.

“We have simplified the procedures and are proceeding without bureaucracy. Compensation has already been paid to over a thousand farmers. There are only a few cases left, where we are essentially waiting for them to bring us some of the information we had requested,” she said.

She added, “we have already received more than 500 applications for the reactivation plans, and this satisfies us”.

The government’s financial aid for farmers impacted by the fires comes in two forms: compensation and “reactivation plans”.

Compensation comes in the form of a one-time payment, with much of that money having already been disbursed. The agriculture ministry had said on Wednesday that it had already paid out almost €3 million to affected farmers for this purpose.

For financial aid in the form of the “reactivation plans”, successful applicants receive an advance payment of up to 30 per cent of the amount they requested.

Then further payments will, according to the agriculture ministry, be made at “regular intervals”, depending on the progress of efforts to restore fire-damaged farms.

Panayiotou also announced that the deadline for applications for inclusion in the “reactivation plans” has been extended from its originally scheduled cutoff point of August 22 to September 15.

This, she said, had come after “the community had made a request”.

She described the funding as “the first and most dynamic impetus for reactivation, to return to cultivating our land, to cultivate the plots we have, vineyards, olives, carob trees, everything that exists in the area, to re-cultivate so as to restore this landscape”.

On this matter, she pointed out that plots which had been cultivated “functioned as ‘green firebreaks’” when the wildfire was raging. A green firebreak is a strategically planted strip of vegetation which s designed to be fire-resistant and thus act as a barrier to slow or stop the spread of wildfires.

Asked about a request made by Omodos mukhtar Evgenios Michael for streambeds in fire-affected areas to be cleaned, she said that “the procedures are not bureaucratic”.

“We want to protect the life that grows there without making interventions which will bring more adverse effects to nature. So, what the water development department is giving as guidance is how to clean properly so as not to have negative impacts on the organisms which grow there,” she said.

She then added that the same philosophy will apply to the areas which are to be reforested, saying that “what the ministry is interested in is that the planting around the villages includes the right species”.

“What we always want to use … are species which are adapted to the environment of Cyprus, species which are not exceptionally flammable,” she said.

She added that there will be a further meeting held in September to inform mukhtars about studies which have been carried out regarding a total of 245 villages in Cyprus.

The study, she said, includes information “about how they can be protected with these green firebreaks, what they should plant, precisely with the aim of developing this type of tree so that they are more protected”.