The Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) says it cannot legally intervene inside the Filanta complex in Larnaca, where electricity and water are being stolen and the residents’ committee says it received death threats last week when it tried to cut off the illegal connections. EAC staff and police visited the complex on Monday, and spokeswoman Christina Papadopoulou said: “It is a situation we have known about for years.”
The committee also says police have told it they can do nothing, which its chairman, Marios Fotiou, said he could not understand.
Asked for comment by Phileleftheros, police spokesman Vyronas Vyronos said police were acting within their remit, carrying out operations to make arrests and investigating complaints. Efforts were being made with the other competent services to find a permanent solution within the law, he said.
Problems at the complex have been reported repeatedly for at least five years. In May, a foreign national died and two others were injured after jumping from balconies there to avoid arrest during an operation by the Aliens and Immigration Unit.
The Larnaca District Local Government Organisation (DLGO) declared the complex dangerous a few weeks ago. Its president, Angelos Hadjicharalambous, told CyBC on Monday that all competent state services and local authorities must be involved to find a definitive solution. “Each of us must see what our share is and take measures,” he said. Matters that had come to light should be handled by police, he added, saying he had informed them himself.
The legal residents are urgently trying to take action at the complex because of the DLGO’s declaration. People, including children, are living there in very poor conditions. Residents allege that a ring is illegally renting out about 30 flats, most of which belong to a company that has been in liquidation since 2014.
Fotiou told Phileleftheros the complex was losing 60 per cent of its water, a cost borne by the legal residents. “Whatever they steal, we pay for,” he said. The committee’s information is that tenants are charged per head on top of their rent; one tenant was charged 100 euros in a month for water and electricity.
The committee has filed complaints, including names, but has received no response, Fotiou said. It has written to the justice minister, the police chief, the deputy minister of migration and international protection and the deputy minister of social welfare, among others.
Fotiou also said those who had illegally occupied part of the complex had closed off a space and turned it into a nursery, and had earlier set up a barber’s shop. The committee had reopened closed-off corridors on the first floor at great expense, he said, but gave up after the threats. The situation in two of the complex’s five buildings was out of control, he added, and the Welfare Office should check the tenants’ living conditions.
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