Minister briefed on local government reform progress

Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou was briefed on the progress for implementing local authority reform in a series of meetings over the past few weeks, including procedures to hire another 105 people as part of the efforts.

An announcement by the interior ministry on Monday specified Ioannou met with the interim coordination councils of the district local government organisations (Eoa) across the country.

“The purpose of the meetings with the five interim coordinating councils was to see at what stage of implementation they are at and what are the outstanding issues based on our roadmap, as well as various problems that have arisen in recent months.”

Ioannou said he sought to be briefed on the progress of the roadmap ahead of July 1 next year, when the implementation of the local government reform is due to come into force.

Any outstanding matters and issues identified in the past few months were recorded, with the aim of solving them. No major issues have been identified, he said.

Staffing for Eoa was a key theme during the meetings, where the first step will be to transfer existing personnel from municipalities and town planning departments to Eoa.

Within this framework, efforts are underway to hire 105 staff, who will be assigned to the town planning and building authorities. They will be tasked with preparing and processing a number of pending applications which have still not been assessed.

Next week, Ioannou is slated to meet with the Paphos Eoa, over the new common licensing system ‘Evagoras’. In 2024, a meeting will be held with all councils for a full discussion and presentation of the new data and the revised roadmap for the completion of the procedures.