There has never been an appointment of the Minister of Rural Development Lefteri Avgenakis by Agricultural Association of Alexandroupolias claimed by members of his administration, the Deputy Minister of Rural Development and Food and Member of Parliament for Evros of the ND stressed on OREN, on the show “Hour of Greece” Stavros Keletsison the contrary, as he told ERT, on the show “Connections”, a delegation of the specific club participated in the Komotini meeting.

As explained by the deputy minister, the Regional Governor Christodoulos Topsidis, when he saw Lefteris Avgenakis at the Maximos Palace at the meeting of the regional governors with the Prime Minister, he invited him to go to Komotini where he organized a meeting of representatives of the Region’s agricultural bodies.

The meeting, as Stavros Keletsis said, which took place at the Region’s offices in Komotini, started at 3:30 p.m. But it lasted longer than expected.

“The discussion with the institutions took place in a very nice atmosphere to exchange views on agricultural issues”, he noted and emphasized that at the Komotini meeting “there were also representatives of the specific farmers from Alexandroupoli who were stationed”.

He explained that “in Alexandroupoli we had arranged, shortly before the flight, for the minister to go to rest in a room and at the same time see the olive producers who had burned olives in order to tell him about a pending issue, regarding the non-payment of yet another compensation for olives. There was no other appointment, no other meeting on the schedule.”

As he said, the farmers of the area learned that he was going there and organized themselves and went outside the hotel. However, since the meeting in Komotini lasted more than three hours, “we said that we will not go to the hotel but directly to the airport and the olive producers will come to see them there, in an airport room, which is what happened” emphasized the deputy minister, who added that he notified the olive producers to come to the airport for the meeting.

When asked why the tension was caused, Stavros Keletsis said “because the farmers who had gathered outside the hotel and were waiting for Mr. Avgenakis to go, finally learned that he will not go. But he didn’t go because he canceled a meeting that had been planned, but because we went straight to the airport because the meeting that took place in Komotini and which took place at the initiative of the Region took too long.”

He added: “This is the reality. That an appointment was allegedly cancelled, this does not correspond to the truth”.

In fact, the deputy minister who said that he knows the specific farmers, said that he himself had met them in the previous days and in fact the day before he had gone to the block of Kastania and had talked with the farmers for more than an hour.

Referring to tomorrow’s meeting of the delegation of the blocs with the prime ministerthe deputy minister said that we are all looking forward to her and pointed out the phrase of Kyriakos Mitsotakis that “we will be scraping the bottom of the barrel». As he explained “this means anything more than the backwardness of Greek citizens and our economy”.

Sending a message to the farmers, he emphasized that “the doors of the ministry were and are open. The dialogue is continuous from the first moment we went to the ministry until these difficult times when we have the blocks. Collective protest is a perfectly legitimate right, as long as it does not reach the point where it operates at the expense of society and the economy.”