All “main artery roads” in the north will be lit with streetlights by the end of the year, the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said on Monday.

Speaking in ‘parliament’, he said the lighting of important roads, junctions, and roundabouts will be included in plans to upgrade the north’s road network infrastructure.

“The lighting on our roads has been left unfinished … We are now consulting with the municipalities’ union from time to time to help to eliminate this problem,” he said, adding that at present, his ‘government’s’ priority at present is the road linking Nicosia and Kyrenia.

On lighting that road, he said, he has been in cooperation with the Turkish Cypriot municipalities in both Kioneli and Kyrenia to “solve lighting malfunctions”, with the materials provided by the central ‘government’ and the personnel provided by the municipalities.

The lighting of roads came to the fore in the north in recent weeks following another series of deaths from traffic accidents, with the debate on the matter culminating on Sunday with ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli and electricity authority Kib-Tek employees’ trade union El-Sen leader Ahmet Tugcu pointing fingers at each other.

Their back-and-forth came after 24-year-old Ahmet Can Kepenek died in a traffic accident on the motorway between Nicosia and Morphou near Yerolakkos in the early hours of Sunday morning, just six weeks after 46-year-old Huseyin Ulu had died in another crash on the same stretch of road.

The road is known to have faulty and broken streetlights, meaning motorists are often driving through darkness during night hours.

Tugcu was the first to comment, criticising a perceived lack of action on Arikli’s part.

“You are the only one responsible for the death of our two citizens, Erhan. You cannot just say this was fate and move on,” he began.

He added that El-Sen is “ready to repair the lampposts without any charge”, provided that the materials are purchased, and thus requested that the ‘transport ministry’ buy lamps, cables, and other materials required to fix the streetlights.

Arikli insisted that it is Kib-Tek which bears responsibility for lighting the north’s roads, saying the authority collects around 14 million TL (€377,090) per month from billpayers to light roads, and refuses to hand any of that money over to municipalities to allow that to happen, “even though it should have”.

He added that the north’s highways department had written to the Kioneli and Yerolakkos municipality in 2023 regarding broken and faulty lights on the stretch of road where the two deadly crashes occurred, but “did not receive a response”.

“A similar letter was written last month, but again, no response was received. The highways department does not have the authority to intervene in electrical failures on the roads on its own. Despite this, the known evil front is using this opportunity to carry out a lynching campaign against us and our ministry,” he said.

In ‘parliament’ on Monday, opposition party CTP leader Tufan Erhurman expressed his distaste at the back of forth, saying it is “now very tiring to hear about the confusion regarding who has the authority over streetlights”.

He also pointed out that Kib-Tek is affiliated with the ‘prime minister’s’ office, thus insinuating that if Arikli is blaming Kib-Tek for the issues, he is effectively blaming his own boss.

On the matter of the ‘prime minister’s’ office, he said an affiliated committee was established on the matter of streetlights and asked what had happened with it.

“Why was the confusion over who has the authority not resolved for such a long time? If this is related to legislation, it should be changed. If it is a financial problem, contributions should be made to the right place. This issue has become a constant excuse-making process,” he said.

The matter of inadequate road lighting in the north first came to the fore in 2021, after a 60-year-old British national named David Shepherd was run over and killed while walking near the Kyrenia district village of Vasileia.

His family believed the road on which he was killed to be dangerous, as it was entirely unlit, and thus contacted then-‘transport minister’ Resmiye Canaltay to demand that things be changed.

His sister Debbie Wolstencroft visited Cyprus six months after the incident and expressed her dismay at the lack of progress.

“Shortly after the accident we read that [Canaltay] visited the accident site and promised to make urgent improvements to the lighting. Six months later, there’s no progress,” she told newspaper Cyprus Today in 2021.

She added, “it would be of some solace to us if the government made safe these black sports for everyone, so our brother’s loss is not in vain, and no other families suffer the tragic loss we have”.