Forestry department head Savvas Iezekiel on Thursday warned of possible “adverse and irreversible effects” of the government’s decision to transfer control of forest firefighting duties to the interior ministry.

He made the comment during a meeting with House president Annita Demetriou, though the official readout of the meeting made no reference to any elaboration on this warning.

It did say that Demetriou “praised the actions of [the forestry department] and its staff in preventing and dealing with forest fires”.

She also “stressed the need to inform the competent parliamentary committees on the matter of implementing” the decision to transfer control of forest firefighting services, before adding that the decision may possibly be “reviewed”.

Both Demetriou and Iezekiel, according to the readout, “recognised the need to establish a national civil protection mechanism, which would have expanded powers to coordinate various services … without adding unnecessary bureaucratic procedures”.

Last month, a group of former forestry department heads accused the government of breaking the law in its plans to transfer control of forest firefighting duties.

“The attempted reform violates the provisions of the new forest legislation and the spirit of the new forest policy, which were completed after long consultations that lasted three to four years,” they said in a letter to President Nikos Christodoulides.

They added that most forest firefighters are permanent department staff, who work as firefighters in the summer but perform other forest management tasks in the winter.

As such, they said, transferring forest firefighting duties to the interior ministry would be “highly disruptive”.

The planned changes come with the government having renamed the interior ministry as the “interior and civil protection ministry”, with the aim of creating a national civil protection mechanism.

Previously, presidential crisis management advisor George Boustras had said that under the planned reforms, the civil defence will see its staffing levels boosted and will become in and of itself a civil protection force “in terms of its responsibilities and capabilities, as is the case in the rest of Europe”.

“We want two things; one is to strengthen firefighting capacity, so everyone goes under the same umbrella. Secondly, we want to see the whole picture. So that’s why civil protection is being strengthened,” he said.

Firefighting and the general response to fires is the most salient aspect of the civil defence’s role at present, in light of the wildfire which tore through the Limassol district and killed two people in July.

With this in mind, Boustras said that “we saw this year, especially during the summer, what is happening not only in our country but also in the wider region”, and that outside of the region, “Europe as a whole faced a very difficult summer due to the fires”.

As such, he said the civil protection force will have an increased firefighting capacity and a new organisational structure covering the entire disaster management response mechanism, from prevention and suppression to restoration.

In this context, the government is modernising services and has requested technical assistance from the European Commission.

“Technical assistance comes from the European Union through international organisations and various services, which come and advise based on international practice. They work with state officials to propose a solution that would be tailored to our own needs,” he said.