Many laws have been enacted on the issue of fires and as a result there is confusion about what is valid and what is not, what cases are part of which law.
At the same time, while 90% of the fires are certain to have been due to the bad habit of people burning weeds, however there is no special law to send the message to all those doing this that they will be punished.
It is noted that there are penalties for fires in forests, in the countryside, in towns, generally for lighting a fire, for tossing cigarette butts in a road or in a forest but there is no unified text. Moreover, several Authorities are involved in the implementation of the laws.
Agriculture Minister Kostas Kadis told Phileleftheros that after the huge fire of last Saturday he will rekindle the issue of increasing penalties for causing a fire.
As Law Commissioner Louiza Zannetou said, a strange thing is that the Law on Forests provides for ten-year imprisonment while according to the Penal Code the imprisonment is for 20 years. She added that the legislation and the action plan must be studied since a fire can break out anywhere.
