Lefka village ‘on the way to becoming Trikomo’ amid construction boom

The village of Kazivera, near Lefka, is “on the way to becoming Trikomo” amid a construction boom, local residents have warned.

Trikomo has grabbed headlines in recent months and years thanks to near exponential construction of high-rise buildings in the area, and now it seems developers in the north may be turning their attention to the west of the island, and Kazivera in particular.

A cursory glance at real estate websites in the north shows an eerily familiar sight of hundreds of apartments in newly-developed or under construction high-rise buildings currently on the market in Kazivera, and residents are now coming forward to express their concerns.

Lefka Tourism Association chairman Hasan Karlitas spoke on Monday of a “pillage of construction” and added that the Lefka region does not have the infrastructure required to support such developments.

“There is no infrastructure, and water resources, roads, the environment, and the region’s unique values and comparative advantages are not being taken into consideration at all,” he said.

He added, “the housing capacity will increase to 15,000, which means 30,000 new people living in the region.” At the last census in 2011, Kazivera had a population of 1,042.

He warned that if construction continues at current rates, “many of our values will be destroyed in the long term and will not come back, it will be too late.”

He added that his and other non-governmental organisations in the Lefka region had renewed their calls for a zoning plan to be published immediately, and said “a lack of planning and control is the biggest problem in our country.”