Alaminos is built 28 kilometres away from the city of Larnaca, and it is one of the villages that whose environment was respected and none of the village houses were placed in the valley formed by the river in millions of years, instead the village was placed on higher areas.
Greeks of Cyprus lived on the west side of the river, while Turkish Cypriots lived on the east side. In 1974, the Turkish Cypriot residents, abandoned their homes and went to the occupied by the Turks areas of Cyprus.
A great number of residents deal exclusively with agriculture. The river created a valley with a 500 metre width and a length some kilometres. This valley is totally planted with orange and olive trees, while huge areas of land are planted with vegetables and groceries, in greenhouses as well as in open fields. The visitor can stop and talk to the farmers, and observe the production closely.
The people are simple, warm and welcome you with a smile. We talked to them and asked about the production of fruits and vegetables.
The main problem is the water, as we were told. The government gives us water from Stavrovouni, but it is so expensive that we do not dare to even use it. We open drillings for water supplies and they cost a lot.
I paid 500.000 euros for drillings and still did not manage to cover the needs of my production with water says Mr Charalampos (a farmer with big areas of orange orchards and grocery and vegetable greenhouses). All the farmers of Alaminos are in despair. We do not know what to do. We are left in the hand of god. If the government does not come to support us, pretty soon we will pass on to unemployment and thousands of acres will become infertile land.
The number of orange trees decreases year by year, since the water is not enough for us to water them. A few years ago, the whole field was “planted” with greenhouses, today there are more or less 50.
All of this is reality and it is a shame that such a beautiful valley to be left to dry out. It has to stay just as we saw it, at all costs. Kilometres of green, until the shores of the see of Alaminos.
The fields should continue to look like a mosaic of colours, since they are planted with a variety of vegetables. The people, the hundreds of farmers, to continue to bow in order to gather the products of their land. Even the greenhouses, with the cold nylon colours, create unprecedented images for the town people.
Some of us should take care of this, in order to avoid that another agricultural community gets destroyed.
