A man living in a flat in a refugee estate block due to be demolished as unsafe is demanding 500,000 euros from the government to leave, even though he is not entitled to the flat, Interior Minister Konstantinos Ioannou told the House Interior Committee on Tuesday.
The man is citing the cost of renovating the flat. The block is to be replaced with a new building under the ‘ktiZO’ scheme.
Ioannou raised the case in response to parliament members’ complaints about delays. If he decided to remove the man by force, “they’ll shout that we threw him out on the street,” he said.
Beneficiaries were also influenced by what was said publicly from time to time, and their reactions were delaying the scheme, Ioannou said. Responding to comments that only one block had been completed in the three years since the scheme began, he said a second was nearing completion and five more would be finished by 2028.
Asked why the state did not take over construction of the new blocks to speed things up, Ioannou said it could not intervene in private property. Once refugees were issued title deeds, the flats were no longer public property, he said. Turning to one parliament member, he asked whether he could walk into the MP’s home and announce he would build him a new one.
The blocks on refugee estates were given title deeds years ago, which Ioannou believed happened during Glafcos Clerides’s presidency. A later decision, under the late Sokratis Hasikos, for the state to keep maintaining the blocks failed because the work progressed slowly.
Under ktiZO, the state provides assistance for a second time, for safety reasons, when others have received no help at all, Ioannou said. It pays 80 to 90 per cent of the value of the new flats, with refugee beneficiaries paying the rest, and also pays for the engineer, leaving beneficiaries simply to decide which flat each will get. Those who do not want to take part can take the value of the land and some assistance and leave, he said, adding that between 80,000 and 120,000 euros had been paid to about 30 to 40 beneficiaries who opted out.
Flats being built in Latsia under the scheme are worth around 250,000 euros, the minister said. If beneficiaries wish, they can agree with the contractor that it will sell their flats, keep 20,000 euros and give them the remaining 230,000 euros to buy a home elsewhere. Solutions existed where there was goodwill, he added.
Parliament member Zacharias Koulias suggested the government could pay the share owed by beneficiaries who, for various reasons, do not pay their contribution, and register a memo on the flat so the amount is paid on transfer, either by the beneficiary’s heirs or by a future owner.
