Audit report damns shortcomings in Akamas measures

Criminal cases over illegal Akamas restaurants take ‘years’, audit report saysDelays of “years” have been observed between the detection of illegal catering and entertainment venues in protected areas of the Akamas peninsula and the bringing of criminal cases against their operators, the audit office wrote on Wednesday. It said that in one case, a restaurant had been “illegally erected on state forest land” and that a demolition order was issued shortly after it was detected, but that pursuant to an appeal filed by its operator, the restaurant remains operational. In other cases, it said, demolition orders have not been executed, which it said “raises serious concerns in relation to the tolerance shown” to operators of illegal venues by the Paphos district government, the Akamas municipality and the Paphos district officer. Additionally, it wrote that in some cases, second homes are being constructed in locations where planning permission was only granted for agricultural warehouses, and as such called for better “monitoring” so as to “confirm that the buildings erected are consistent with the permits issued”. The situation regarding unlicensed construction in the area, it said, “remains out of control”, with on-site inspections finding various refreshment bars and other, similar businesses operating within protected areas. Elsewhere in the report, the audit office also criticised that a total of €965,955 has been paid to the contractor awarded the rights to construct the Akamas region’s improved road network, of a total contracted amount of €1,378,505 plus value added tax. This, it said, is even though only 17 per cent of the planned work has been completed, with the forestry department having acquiesced to the contractor’s requests for payment on eight of nine occasions thus far. “We asked the forestry department to provide us with additional information regarding the total amount of the contractor’s additional claims and the forestry department’s counterclaims, but we are told that the information in question was being handled by the legal service and no further details could be provided,” it said. Ministry replies with 36-page letter As such, it said that the forestry department was “unable to provide [us] with complete information on the individual cost” of each part of the project. “This increases the risk of making incorrect payments and limits the ability to calculate individual costs,” the report said. Later in the day, the agriculture ministry responded to the report, saying that it had submitted a 36-page letter to auditor-general Andreas Papaconstantinou addressing the issues raised in the report. It said the evaluation of projects being undertaken in the Akamas region “should take into account the full history of the decisions made, the institutional and legal framework in force when they were made, the responsibilities of the authorities involved, and the corrective actions which followed”. On this front, it said that in recent years, “measures have been taken to further reduce the environmental footprint” of construction projects in the region. Nonetheless, it said the report’s findings “will be studied and utilised with a view to continuously improving environmental protection, management and governance processes”.