A report into the “multi-year delay” in installing lifts in government-owned apartment buildings has been released by Human Rights Commissioner Maria Stylianou Lottides.
The report highlights the impact on elderly and disabled people living in the buildings and comes after Lottides’ office received “complaints” about the issue.
The complaints included one from a 90-year-old resident of such a building in Limassol, as well as from other residents of other buildings who are often elderly or have health and mobility problems.
Many residents have complained of waiting for years for lifts to be installed, saying they face “heaps of problems” every day while trying to go about their lives.
The report said delays in lift installations, which have been going on since 2017, “cannot be justified”.
It adds “it cannot be ignored that at least six years have passed since the decision to install lifts, a period that could be described as anything but reasonable”.
The report recommends the Urban planning department “take all the necessary actions” to install lifts in “all the buildings where they have decided to install lifts” by the end of the year.
It says that a lack of accessibility “limits the autonomy and entrenches the social exclusion of both the tenants of the apartment buildings, as well as people with disabilities”.
“It is obvious that social exclusion brings about a chain of negative effects on the mental health of these individuals while also increasing their dependence on third parties”, it adds.
The report also criticised the apparent decision to revoke a promise to install a lift in one building in Limassol after the planned installation had been announced in 2017.
“It is not legal for the administration to ‘surprise’ people [by cancelling plans to install a lift] when the latter in good faith trusted int for long periods of time”, it said.
It added that “the people in question are being punished for a delay that is not their own fault”.