There will be no problems with the Paphos district’s water supply next year, “regardless of the weather conditions”, the agriculture ministry’s undersecretary Andreas Gregoriou said on Sunday.

Speaking at the harvest festival in the Paphos district village of Panayia, he said his ministry’s aim has been to ensure there will be no water cuts in the district in the coming year.

“We are in the final stage. It seems that we will manage to avoid any cuts, even though we are at the beginning of the new hydrological year, because as well, we have expectations that we will have more rain than the previous dry year,” he said.

Additionally, he said, “with the desalination units which are under construction, we will be able to say from now on, regardless of the weather conditions, that there will be no problem with the Paphos district’s water supply”.

“Therefore, Paphos’ water problem can be considered solved for 2026 as well,” he said.

Paphos district governor Charalambos Pittokopitis also spoke at the event and said the district’s water supply has been maintained “under very difficult conditions”.

He also pointed out that with the installation of a mobile desalination unit near Potima beach, in the village of Kissonerga, which he said will eventually produce 12,000 cubic metres of water, and the return of the desalination unit which burnt down in the village of Kouklia next year, Paphos will not face water supply issues going forward.

“I can state with certainty that the water issue regarding drinking water in both the town and in the district of Paphos has been resolved,” he said.

When the Potima beach desalination unit was put into service last month, the water development department’s Paphos district engineer Charis Kasioulis said that as yet, the flow of water into the Paphos district’s reservoirs remains “negligible”.

Asked about the Mavrokolympos reservoir, which was entirely drained in January to fix a corroded vent, he said “studies have been completed”, and that as such, work to fix the vent and then to be able to reopen the reservoir will be completed “before the winter season”.

The opening of the new desalination unit comes a day after the water development department had announced that 12 mobile desalination units which were imported from the United Arab Emirates are now in operation, and that one more will enter service soon.

In addition, it said, more will be imported next year.

“The implementation of measures to address water scarcity is progressing rapidly,” it said, adding that the units which are set to arrive next year will “strengthen the balance of Cyprus’ water supply and address the effects of the prolonged drought”.

The first mobile desalination unit from the UAE entered service in July, with acting water development department director George Kazantzis describing the units’ installation as an “extremely complex process which took place in limited time”.

Of the water itself, he said that whatever is not required by consumers in the Limassol district will be transferred to the southern conveyor and channelled to the Nicosia, Larnaca and Famagusta districts, which are all currently receiving water from the Kouris reservoir, northwest of Limassol.

The arrival of the desalination units from the UAE was announced by President Nikos Christodoulides in April, with government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis later saying there will be “no risk” of there being any water cuts in Cyprus this summer as a result of the units’ forthcoming arrival.

Christodoulides had stressed that the units will be provided “free of charge”, a fact he said “underlines the importance of relations in the context of the country’s foreign policy, and in matters of internal policy”.