Before the spectrum of bankruptcy seven Municipalities - Among them is Sotira

The Parliamentary Audit Committee appealed to the Ministry of Interior and the Union of Municipalities to distribute the state sponsorship, amounting to 60,8 million euros, to the newly established Municipalities.

The issue was occupied at today's meeting of the Committee, following an ex-officio proposal by MPs George Georgiou, Lefteris Christoforou and Kyriakos Hatzigiannis.

In statements after the session, DISY MP Kyriakos Hatzigiannis spoke of a "hiding" of responsibilities between the Ministry of Interior and the Union of Municipalities in relation to the distribution of 60,8 million of state sponsorship to Municipalities, adding that it was transparent in today's session that "both are to blame".

He called on both the Union of Municipalities to proceed to distribute this state sponsorship on an equal basis and proportionally as the formula applies and concerns all Municipalities and the Ministry of Interior "to ensure the proportional distribution of the Union of Municipalities in order not to derail the development but also the existential problem of the six new Municipalities ".

"Otherwise," he warned, "unfortunately there will be a lock on the operation of the six new Municipalities, although we, parties and the State, had led all these Municipalities to evolve into Municipalities from communities."

On behalf of AKEL, the MP of the party Irini Charalambidou, spoke about "good will both from the Ministry of Interior and from the Union of Municipalities to find a specific formula for an equal distribution of 60,8 million in all 30 Municipalities".

Noting that two bills are being discussed in the Committee on Interior "which will make the greatest contribution to the improvement of the operation of the Municipalities and to the reduction of costs in terms of Local Government reform and clustering", Ms. Charalambidou criticized the DISY parliamentary group that it puts obstacles in their way.

"Some parties insist on creating problems and seeing problems even where they do not exist for reasons of pre-election expediency and in the whole process, of course, the Municipalities are also burdened," he concluded.

DIKO MP George Prokopiou stated that the amount of 60,8 million euros that has been approved for 2012 must be properly distributed to all without exception in the Municipalities, even if they are either new or older Municipalities.

"This fact became clear and we asked the Government, which was the Ministry of Interior, as well as the Union of Municipalities to examine the issue and to do absolute justice," he added.

Representing the six newly formed Municipalities, the Mayor of Geri, Argyris Argyrou, said that "the cuts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reduce the hope for us to cope with our difficulties". He added that their Municipalities are understaffed and that their finances do not allow them to be sufficiently staffed in order to offer the services they desire.

Regarding who is to blame for the distribution of the sponsorship, Mr. Argyrou said that the Union of Municipalities is responsible but because the amount they will give to the Union of Municipalities has not been determined, the Union has not made a final decision on how to distribute the money.

"Six months have passed and we see that we can not work, because we do not know the amount we are entitled to be able to work," he said.

Mr. Argyrou stated that after the cuts, they estimate that they will receive 400.000 euros this year (out of 685.000 they expected to receive), an amount which he characterized as "humiliating", since, as he said, when they were communities they received much more.

"We, by joining the Municipalities, estimated that we would receive 1,5 million euros each in order to be able to operate, today our wings are being cut off and we will not be able to work in any way," he said.

Answering a question, Mr. Argyrou explained that when these Municipalities were communities they did not have to pay the salaries of workers and caretakers, which were paid by the District Administrations, while with their development these funds are transferred to the Municipalities.

SotiraNews.com/iKypros.com