Newly-elected district governors, mayors, deputy mayors, municipal councillors and school superintendents were officially installed on Tuesday, during lengthy proceedings following the unprecedented numbers of positions and nominees.

The new district governors are Constantinos Yiorkadjis for Nicosia, Yiannis Tsouloftas for Limassol, Angelos Hadjicharalambous for Larnaca, Charalambos Pittokopitis for Paphos and Yiannis Karousos for Famagusta.

Yiorkadjis, who served as Nicosia mayor for 12.5 years, expressed mixed emotions during his inauguration and pledged to build a new, citizen-friendly organisation that delivers high-quality services promptly and at the lowest possible cost.

His Limassol counterpart emphasised the importance of collective effort, adding “we will start hard work immediately,” calling on everyone to work together regardless of their political affiliations.

Hadjicharalambous meanwhile stressed that “collectively, we start hard work without compromises, based on the goals and plan we set to deliver a better quality of life and better services to the citizens of Larnaca.”

Pittokopitis expressed his readiness to start building a flexible, reliable, and efficient organisation that will make all Paphos residents proud. “We will take Paphos forward into a new era of development, progress, prosperity and innovation.”

The Famagusta district governor said citizens have given him a strong mandate to improve the region. “We will transform Famagusta into the best district to live, work, raise children, visit, and invest in, with year-round vibrancy,” Karousos said.

The successful nominees will now take up their new posts and start the nitty gritty of local government reform. They will need to grapple with recently consolidated and, in some cases sizeable, municipalities and “clusters” under their responsibility.

The new system will see 18 new metropolitan municipalities emerge from the fusion of the 28 current municipalities and 63 communities.

This entails a fair amount of reshuffling, for example, for the Nicosia district, five metropolitan municipalities take shape, the Nicosia, Lakatamia, Latsia-Geri, Southern Nicosia-Dali, and Strovolos municipalities.

The Nicosia metropolitan municipality, itself, breaks down into the boroughs of Nicosia, Ayios Dhometios, Engomi and Aglandja.

The new governors will hold their first meeting on Thursday with Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou, with actions already in place to make the transition to the new system smoother.

Hiccups are to be expected, interior ministry sources told the Cyprus News Agency on Monday, but the best possible preparation has been made and all services are ready to address any obstacles that may arise.