The EOA of Nicosia will be forced to call in the Police to evacuate two apartment buildings, which two families (one in each apartment building) refuse to evacuate, making their demolition impossible.
A legal procedure has already been initiated in this direction. The delay observed, both in these two apartment buildings and in others (for different reasons) caused the reaction of both the president of the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees, Nikos Kettiros, and members of the Committee, who consider it inconceivable that three years after the start of the BuildingZO Plan, only one apartment building has been completed, while another one is expected to be completed, at a time when the Plan of the first phase includes another 17 apartment buildings.
It is noted that the Ministry of Interior spends €123,000 every month to cover the rents of refugees who abandoned their apartment buildings and rented until the construction of the new apartment buildings is completed. Especially for the two apartment buildings, which have not yet been demolished (because they are not abandoned), the state will continue to pay the rents for several more years.
The state also pays rents for those who have evacuated their apartments and demolished apartment buildings, but the start of construction work has not yet progressed. As a representative of the Town Planning Department stated before the Committee, so far €4,647,590 has been paid for rents.
In addition, the contribution of the beneficiary refugees (i.e. the money they had to pay to the state to get a new apartment) amounts to a total of €7,110,000.
MPs wondered whether it is worth paying so many rents and observing so many delays because some beneficiaries do not pay their share, either because they do not have money, or simply because they do not want to contribute.
Based on the information received by the MPs, Mr. Kettiros stated that the contribution is not paid, either because the beneficiaries do not have the money they are entitled to, or because they do not agree with each other, or because disputes arise between heirs, and so on. Both Mr. Kettiros and MPs Giorgos Lysandrides, Christos Christofides, Anastasia Hasikou, Zacharias Koulias, Adamos Aspris and Litsa Drousioti, stressed the need to speed up the procedures.
