Ministry promotes unified local government portal

Reform of local governance has entered its final stages as local elections are coming up in less than a year, the interior ministry said in an announcement on Wednesday.

The head of the local governance service at the ministry Antonis Economides told a municipal union meeting that at the elections in nine months, the new local authorities will be voted into office.

“The operation of the specific system for all the municipalities of Cyprus is on the one hand a pioneering project and, on the other, one of the main parameters of the successful implementation of the local government reform, which is expected to be implemented from July 1 next year,” he told the Association of Municipalities in Larnaca as he presented the unified information system ‘Evagoras’.

He added that the interior minister, the permanent secretary of the ministry, and the advisory council are regularly informed by the municipalities union regarding the progress of developing the system, since it one of the main challenges in the reform of local governance.

Economides said that the development of the system, which is set to offer many municipal services on one platform, is on schedule.

“The implementation of reforming local governance has entered the final stretch, since in less than nine months the elections for new local authorities will be held,” he said. “The timetable for the completion of the necessary actions for the timely and proper preparation for the operation of the new local authorities is extremely pressing and this concerns everyone, the government, the local authorities, and the union of municipalities.”

In his speech, the president of the Union of Cyprus Municipalities and Larnaca mayor Andreas Vyras said that “after years of hard work, many obstacles and difficulties, ‘Evagoras’ is here, existing and on a straight path towards its full implementation.”

He added that “the mission of the local government is to provide the best possible services at the lowest possible cost to the citizen, thus improving his quality of life”.

He said he was certain that Evagoras will contribute to a large extent to this mission.