The Limassol district government on Wednesday called on people living in the district to “demonstrate responsibility” in their water use over the Kataklysmos weekend.

The Kataklysmos (flood festival) weekend, one of the highlights of the Greek Orthodox Christian calendar, typically sees people engage in water fights and other water-based activities.

As such, the district government called on people to “avoid practices which may lead to reckless or unnecessary water consumption, taking into account the extremely adverse weather conditions prevailing in Cyprus.

“The preservation of customs can and must be done with respect for the environment and the needs of society as a whole, with social sensitivity for the preservation of our water sources,” it added.

Cyprus has been facing water shortages throughout this year, with multiple years in succession of reduced rainfall leaving the island with insufficient reserves to deal with the height of summer.

One way the island has been aiming to deal with the matter has been through the import of mobile desalination units from the United Arab Emirates, with government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis saying there will be “no risk” of there being any water cuts in Cyprus this summer as a result of the units’ arrival.

Most of those units have been placed in the Limassol district.

But coastal engineer Xenia Loizidou has slammed the government’s plan to import mobile desalination plants as an “incoherent panic solution”.

She said the units are “of course a solution”, but that “to really solve the water problem, the first thing which needs to be done is to invest in infrastructure and proper management of uses”.