Farmers in Paphos promised on Wednesday morning to block the road to the town’s airport if the planned meeting between Agriculture Minister Petros Xenophontos and wheat and potato producers regarding government subsidies has no positive outcome.
The farmers are set to gather in the village of Timi, near the airport, with their tractors on Wednesday morning, and will then move to block the road to the airport should the meeting end without success.
Paphos police’s deputy chief of operations Michalis Nikolaou told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) that the police are “taking [their] own measures to prevent the public from being inconvenienced or any other possibly illegal acts.”
Meanwhile, potato producers’ representative Andreas Karios confirmed to CyBC radio on Wednesday morning that the meeting would be held at 9am, following protests on Tuesday at the Presidential palace against a perceived lack of government support for the sector.
He had told CNA on Tuesday evening that the Agriculture ministry had informed potato producers of a reinstatement of the government’s planned €4.2 million subsidy.
He had added that following the arrangement of a meeting, they had decided to call the protest off “despite the fact that all the protestors expressed reservations about the effectiveness of the government’s proposal.”
The standoff had come in the wake of intense discussions earlier in the week. Xenophontos engaged with representatives of both wheat and potato producers, aiming to extend support amid soaring costs resulting from international conflicts and the Covid-19 pandemic.
