OPINION

‘If only the Italians had it’

When I was young I would often hear the phrase: «Oh if the Italians had that piece of land, what they would do with it?» I was recently reminded of it during a weekend on Kea, a lovely island close to Athens that sadly epitomizes all the ills that contemporary Greeks are capable of. Let’s start with the waste treatment plant that doesn’t work. So foreign visitors to the picturesque little harbor of Vourkari might well think that its main attraction is its peculiar stench. Somebody once made some money by including a stream in the designs for the waste treatment system, then the Archaeological Council halted plans for the plant in order to protect a field in which excavations would never take place and, in the end, local business owners refused to pay to be connected to the system. The result is that a magical place increasingly resembles a cesspool and no one seems to care, even though plenty of people seem to enjoy eating the fish caught there. In the main port, the quay has been crumbling for years. No official has even put a warning buoy on the submerged section. Only a local has put a plastic lamp there. Plans were made and money spent by the Environment and Public Works Ministry to build a new wharf which promptly collapsed in the first storm; the blocks of one of the two piers shifted and the island now risks being without a harbor. Back in Vourkari, a ring road is being kept closed by local interest groups, so concrete mixers and buses have to pass in front of the waterside tavernas along a road wide enough for just one car. Add to that a complete absence of police officers and port officials. So much European Union money, so much spent on building villas on the island, and yet nothing has improved. So we shouldn’t be suprised at a comment on CNN by an American yachtsman who praised the Dalmatian coast saying it was «nothing like Greece.» If only the Italians had Kea.

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