As arguments develop between municipalities and the newly created district self-governance organisations (EOAs), it emerged on Friday that the issuance of planning permits is one of the biggest problem areas.
Greens MP and member of the House interior affairs committee Sravros Papadouris on Thursday drew attention to the urgent need to regulate the manner in which building permits are processed.
Papadouris referred obliquely to brown envelopes, saying use of unscrupulous means to promote permit applications and push them to the top of the queue was a well-known fact.
According to Philenews,the MP emphasised the need to speed up the procedures and respect the order of chronological priority by date of submission.
He said clarity was needed on who among the various officials involved in the whole process is to assume responsibility for pending and new applications.
Papadouris added he was aware of cases pending for three months taking precedence over applicants waiting for a year.
“We need to change our mentality and not return to pre [local government] reform conditions. In order not to talk about [monetary] bribery of various services I [stop] here,” the MP is quoted as saying.
Among other problems, the committee heard that applications which were to be transferred from the [prior] urban planning authorities to EOAs had been lost on the way.
Meanwhile, Cyprus’ Scientific and Technical Chamber (Etek) Chairman Constantinos Constanti confirmed this state of affairs saying licensing delays would lead to further backlog and enable opportunists to embark on more illegal constructions.
Constanti also criticised the timing of the interior ministry’s building amnesty saying that it added 15,000 applications to an already existing load of 30,000 pending. The absence of exchange between the ministry and Etek was problematic, he said.
The Etek head added that a uniform policy by all EOAs needed to be followed so that each would not operate as a “law unto itself” with different approaches.
He also brought up the hot potato of dangerous buildings, which neither the municipalities nor the EOAs currently want to undertake, as it is an endeavour which only brings net costs.
A proposal had been submitted to delay the handover of this responsibility for a year, in hopes that a way will be found to cover the costs for the EOAs (which are supposed to be self-financing).
