Our View: Farmers’ water fees must be suspended for this year at least

Political parties are often guilty of adopting populist positions, and we are certain to see this practice more frequently now that we are just a few months away from parliamentary elections. The call on the government a couple of days ago to temporarily suspend the payment of charges for the use of boreholes by farmers could easily be seen as another example of this, but it is not.

It is much more a case of poor planning by the authorities which now expect farmers to pay the annual fee for the use of water from boreholes over the last nine years – since 2017 when the law was implemented. According to farmers’ representatives who were at the legislature on Tuesday, the ‘water abstraction fee’ that is charged was never collected in these nine years, but the government is now demanding back payment.

The deadline for payment of the fees is April, and totals range from a few thousand euros to more than €100,000. The president of the House agriculture committee, Yiannakis Gavriel, said that the timing could not have been worse as farmers were facing very hard times. Apart from the drought which has led to big cuts in the water supply that would reduce production and incomes, farmers still have to pay high electricity rates and high fertiliser prices. The last thing farmers need under these circumstances were bills for accumulated charges of nine years.

Gavriel, an Akel deputy, said it was “an incomprehensible decision, coming at the most difficult time for farming” and suggested the suspension of payment until the situation improved. His suggestion did not encounter any opposition, but it was too vague. What would constitute an improvement in the current situation? A year of high rainfall? Reservoirs to be 70 per cent full? How long do we wait for things to improve?

The permanent secretary of the agriculture ministry, Andreas Gregoriou, gave an indication of the how the government will handle the matter when he meets farmers’ representatives on Friday to discuss the water abstraction fee. He told the committee that there could be an arrangement for overdue payments to be settled in instalments.

This would be the starting point for the haggling, but deputies were right in calling for a suspension of the payments, at least for this year. Farmers are struggling to survive and are in no position to settle nine years of fees. Why had the authorities not collected this fee every year since its introduction in 2017, and instead allowed the farmers’ debt to accumulate over the years? And to add insult to injury the authorities are demanding settlement of fees in what is certain to be one of the most difficult years ever for farmers. Payment must be suspended this year.