The Municipal Authority of Athens received strong criticism during today’s Municipal Council, from all the factions of the opposition, for the flooding phenomena that occurred yesterday due to the downpour in many parts of Athens, with the most typical one in Ampelokipi.

In fact, Kostas Bakoyiannis spoke of “unprecedented situations” and of problems scattered in all the apartments of the capital.

“Athens drowned yesterday and the big words were washed away by the water,” he characteristically said and asked to know what the policy is for anti-flood shielding.

“Flooding phenomena are not a matter for opportunistic micro-political exploitation”, replied Haris Doukas and continued: “We have been in the municipal authority for nine months and we had said that we would clean the wells ourselves. And indeed we clean the wells and those of the Region, hence the number of wells that were cleaned doubled.

Does just cleaning the wells solve the problem? It is not solved, because in order to be able to deal with the climate crisis, we cannot do it with infrastructure, which we had 20 and 30 years ago. Flood protection remains under Article 186 the competence of the Region. In fact, I read in October 2023 Mr. Hardalia, who had said that in the first 20 months, all the issues related to the fire and flood protection of the basin will be initiated. These pre-election announcements have not been made by the Region, as required by article 186″.

He then emphasized: “The European Commission is giving 32 billion for this very reason. And he said for three years to the cities “give us studies so that we can finance the projects”. No studies were given, so there are no mature projects as I understand it, to join the Recovery and Resilience Fund, which is wrong. The goal is for the study to be ready in September, so that we can have documented all the necessary interventions that we need. We are moving forward with a series of projects, Rizoupoli is moving forward, it will also move forward in Antigonis, we are fighting to include Achaias in the Ampelokipou in the study, to see exactly what is the intervention we need to do”.

And the mayor of Athens concluded: “But here we have to say that 1/3 of the forests of Attica have burned, the infrastructure is not sufficient. How will the municipality of Athens be able to implement all these projects? We are fighting a battle with time to be able to have the study, so that we can talk with specific numbers and at the same time where we can proceed with very fast and immediate interventions”.

From there, Mr. Doukas agreed and committed to having a cross-party committee on the issue of projects in Vasilissis Olgas and regarding the metro in Exarchia, he emphasized that the residents are right, but the recent proposal has not yet gone to the municipality court decision, in which case to take any actions.

The issue of the amateur associations of Athens and the operational costs they are required to pay to the municipality was also raised, and one of their representatives also spoke to the House, while a representative of the teachers also spoke to the House, on the issue of departmental mergers in schools and the reaction that exists from parents and teachers. In this regard, the City Council approved and passed a resolution against mergers.

Finally, the City Climate Pact of the Municipality of Athens was approved for submission to the European Commission, through the European Mission for “100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030”, as well as the merger of the two KEPs, Kypseli and Victoria Square, in one that will be housed on Patision Street.