Clean air campaigners claim court victory

ANTI-pollution campaigners have said that their legal action against the Cyprus Turkish Electricity Authority (Kıb-Tek) over claims that it purchased “poor quality fuel oil” earlier this year has achieved its aims.

In August Kıb-Tek was forced to make an emergency purchase of fuel oil for its Teknecik power plant on the north coast, without going through the usual procurement procedures, due a spike in energy demand.

Claims were made at the time that the fuel oil purchased was of poor quality – denied by the Economy and Energy Minister Erhan Arıklı – leading to some taking the matter to the courts.

A recent statement from former Kıb-Tek deputy chairman Yusuf Avcıoğlu said that as a result of a lawsuit he and others filed two months ago, both Kıb-Tek and the company that won a recent tender to supply a year’s worth of fuel signed a contract “based on the old [pollutant] limits instead of the new, poorer quality limits”.

The statement said: “As it is known, the Kıb-Tek fuel tender could not be finalised for about 10 months. During this time, illegal purchases were made without a tender and it was revealed that poor quality fuel was purchased illegally and the [pollutant] limits were changed in the last tender in order to purchase lower quality fuel.

“In order to put a ‘stop’ to all this, we filed an environmental lawsuit with the High Administrative Court against Kıb-Tek, the Council of Ministers and the Central Tender Commission about two months ago.

“Our main demand in the case we opened was the annulment of the decisions concerning the last fuel tender because the fuel limits would cause more harm to the environment and public health, and this would be contrary to the Constitution, Environmental Law and the Good Administration Law.

“As a result of the pressure created by the lawsuit we filed, both Kıb-Tek and the company that won the tender signed a contract according to the old limits instead of the new, poorer quality limits and this has been entered in the court records. . . Therefore, we achieved the result we wanted, namely preventing the purchase of low quality and bad fuel, without needing to take our case any further.

“I am quite at peace, as we did not hesitate to initiate legal action against these decisions that would adversely affect ‘Public Health’, the ‘Environment’ and even the ‘Power Plant’, and that we finally achieved the result we wanted. Whatever the public interest requires, we will continue to walk on that path.”