By Bejay Browne.
Kissonerga has welcomed the recent suggestion by President Nicos Anastasiades that the long-proposed new marina at nearby Potima bay could include a docking facility for cruise ships.
The Paphos village community leader described it as a logical suggestion that would massively boost tourism in the area.
“We welcome the president’s idea to combine the new marina and a dock for the cruise ships in one area. This will be good for us and for Paphos as a whole. It’s a good sign that he wants to do this and a new tender process will get underway soon,” community leader George Stylianou told the Paphos Post.
President Nicos Anastasiades recently suggested including a pier large enough to accommodate cruise ships in the Paphos marina project near Kissonerga to ensure it was built as soon as possible.
It would also put pay to a spat between Mayor of Paphos, Phedonas Phedonos and the Cyprus National Commission for Unesco. He vowed to plough ahead with plans to construct a new jetty close to the castle at Paphos harbour that would allow cruise ships to dock there. But the local Unesco office insists a heritage impact study should be undertaken first to prevent irreversible destruction to the Unesco world heritage site that covers much of this part of Paphos including the harbour.
“Instead of starting a row with the antiquities department, or whether it should be done at the small harbour, if we want to get the project done soon let it be included in the marina if that is possible,” Anastasiades said. “It will be a way of completing it as soon as possible.”
The president said that was something local authorities must discuss and decide along with the ministry of tourism.
Stylianou said this project would mean that the entire area from Kissonerga and up to Coral Bay would be developed.
“It will good for tourists and it’s important to offer tourism for cruise ship passengers. We hope that it will actually happen this time and eventually be built and that it doesn’t turn out to be just another announcement.”
At issue however is the long and tortuous path plans for the Paphos marina have taken so far with three different consortiums battling it out in the courts for more than a decade as tenders were accepted, rejected and appealed but ultimately came to nothing.
The ground work for announcing a new tender is currently underway by the government.
“I believe that the tender process for quotations will start before the end of the year, and according to the previous plans, from the date of the contract signing, it will take three years, unless anything unforeseen crops up.”
Stylianou believes that by 2024 Kissonerga will have its marina. “I don’t think that I will be the mukhtar then, but you never know.”
