A ring illegally renting out about 30 flats at the Filanta complex in Larnaca tapped into the water supply again on Monday, said Marios Fotiou, head of the complex’s management committee. Fotiou said he had received threatening phone calls after the committee cut the ring’s electricity connections.
Fotiou told philenews that the ring, made up of foreign nationals, rents the flats to third parties without the legal owners’ consent and steals electricity and water through exposed cables wired directly into the meters. Most of the flats belong to a company that has been in liquidation since 2014, he said, and the liquidator’s director had told him the company had nothing to do with the rentals.
His claims follow an appeal by the complex’s legal residents on Friday. A few weeks ago, the Larnaca District Local Government Organisation (DLGO) declared the building dangerous, and the committee has hired a private consultant to make it safe. On May 27, a foreign national died and two others were injured when they jumped from balconies at the complex to avoid arrest during an Aliens and Immigration Unit operation.
Crews brought in by the committee last week removed the cables, Fotiou said, but the ring reconnected them overnight and he then received a threatening call from a withheld number. When the committee removed them a second time, its members received further calls threatening their lives if they touched the power supply again.
The committee had filed complaints and handed over names but received no response, he said. Police told the committee they could do nothing, which he said he could not understand.
The complex is losing 60 per cent of its water, and “whatever they steal, we pay for,” Fotiou said. According to the committee’s information, tenants are charged per head on top of their rent, and one person told the committee he had been charged 100 euros in a month.
Those involved cite tenancy agreements that Fotiou described as bogus and illegal. He said they had become brazen and were saying they were not afraid of the police or of going to prison.
Those occupying part of the complex illegally had closed off an area and turned it into a childcare nursery, having earlier set up a barber’s shop, Fotiou said. The first-floor corridors had also been closed off. The committee reopened them at great expense but has since thrown up its hands after the threats. Two of the complex’s five blocks are out of control, he said.
Fotiou called on the Welfare Office to check the tenants’ living conditions, citing complaints that migrants were living there illegally. He also called for the immediate arrest and deportation of everyone involved in the rental ring.
Letter to authorities
The legal residents’ lawyer, Alexandros Clerides, has written to all the relevant authorities asking them to act, Fotiou said.
A committee letter dated October 3 went to the Minister of Justice and Public Order, the Chief of Police, the Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection, the director of the Migration Department, the Deputy Minister of Social Welfare and the director of Social Welfare Services. Copies went to the Larnaca police director, the Aliens and Immigration Unit and the Larnaca District Welfare Office.
The letter says the problems persist despite repeated complaints, and that conditions in the building put residents, including young children, at risk. It asks police to carry out an on-site operation, identify the people occupying or using the flats, investigate the alleged offences and secure evidence.
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