Mayor: Cough up or face water tanker ban

THE mayor of Esentepe this week issued a fresh warning to home and business owners to pay up more than 5,000TL to be connected to the new mains water system or face a ban on the use of tankers. Cemal Erdoğan, who was re-elected in June, said bill-payers had until the end of August to cough up at least 2,500TL, followed by six monthly instalments of 485TL.

He is demanding the fees from those who have yet to convert to “smart” meters so that they can be connected to a network supplying fresh water from Turkey to

the TRNC, via an underwater pipeline completed in 2015.

Letters have been sent to developments telling property owners that they will not be able to bring water in by tankers as a way of avoiding the charges. Mr Erdoğan said only a sixth of some 1,200 water meters under his jurisdiction had been changed since he first demanded the fees in 2016.

At the time residents were reportedly asked to fork out 1,000TL plus KDV (VAT) for a new pre-paid meter and 2,200TL plus KDV for “infrastructure of piping and excavation-filling”.

He had warned homeowners that they could face arrest if they were caught using tankers, although the initial ban does not appear to have been enforced.

“We are working on solving the water problem by . . . starting at places that have paid and those have been connected, while others . . . will not be connected until they have paid by the deadline of August 30,” Mr Erdoğan told Cyprus Today.

“Otherwise they will be unable to order in water tankers for homes or companies. The cost of payment is also lower than it was before, and I believe there should be no problem for the residents and all will pay in the end.”

Tommy Rognmo, of the Foreign Residents in the TRNC (TFR), accused Mr Erdoğan of “threatening” people.

“We want to know if this money is the same for everybody,” he said. “It is important for this country for a foreigner to come and make an investment, and a lot have done so in the Esentepe area.”

John Miles, a committee member of the Esentepe Water Campaign for Fairness and Transparency, set up in early 2017, and one of 300 people who signed a petition back then to the Interior Ministry, said: “We are once again facing the usual threat, putting us back to where we were two years ago.

“We await a response from the Ombudsman and Interior Ministry regarding the situation as, although no-one expects to get the water for nothing, we do not want to be ripped off. They are by far the most expensive charges made by any municipality.”

British Residents Society Esentepe representative Mike Diplock, who lives at the Turtle Bay Village site and who had previously praised the new water system having made his payments in full, said: “Because the mayor has been reelected, those who haven’t paid are in a position of no change.

“This is a repetition of what happened last year with the same threats, which the mayor actually never went ahead with.”