Within two days, three residents posted photos of problems in Artemida. Olympias Street in Petrota and Vravrona Avenue near the 10th bus stop have been without street lighting ‘for days’. The same resident reports that on a pedestrianised street in the area, the lights remain on even during the day. On Papanikoli Street, muddy water covers almost the entire width of the road, which children use every morning on their way to school. On Vravrona beach, to the left of the ‘Ippokampos’ café, metal umbrella frames have been left lying about, some right by the water’s edge. These complaints were published by iRafina, based on posts by residents on Facebook.
The question that comes up time and time again is ‘who is responsible?’. Reporting the issue to the local council is not just a formality. Without this, a fault often goes unrecorded.
Which phone number for which problem
From the council’s telephone directory:
- Street lighting (streetlights off, lights on during the day): 22940 45556
- Road surface, potholes, road markings: 22940 80440
- Water supply (faults, leaks, no water): 22940 86666
- Bulky items: 22944 40849 and 22944 40850
- Tree branches: 22944 40858
- Civil Protection (flooding, fallen trees, hazards): 6932631740 and 6973234382
- Municipal Police: 6976764969
When phoning, giving your exact location makes all the difference: the street name and the nearest house number, the bus stop or a shop nearby. If the lamppost has a number or a label, please provide it. Say how long the problem has been going on and ask for a reference number or the name of the member of staff who took your call. If the fault isn’t fixed, you can use this number to follow up in writing. A dated photograph is helpful, particularly in the case of flooded roads, which may have dried out by the time the repair crew arrives.
The lighting contract runs until 2034
There is something about street lighting that most people don’t know. From 2023, the council’s street lights, 11,234 units, will be LED and maintained by a private contractor under a 12-year contract expiring on 18 April 2034, at a cost of 6.7 million euros including VAT. The funds come from the cleaning and lighting charges paid by every household as part of their electricity bill. The contract includes a remote control system for the streetlights and a fault management system, and the contractor – currently the THALIS–GLOBILED consortium – is responsible for repairing any streetlights that have gone out. However, the fault is reported to the local council, which then passes the information on to the contractor. We have written about how much the contract costs and how contractors are paid with a 15-month delay.
Streetlights that remain on during the day, such as those on the pedestrianised street, are also a fault: the remote-control system is there precisely to regulate when they switch on.
The stadium with the single pillar
The LED contract covers the roads, not the sports grounds. At the Artemida sports ground, only one of the four lighting masts is operational, following a second cable theft in 2026. As mentioned at the Accountability Meeting on 29 October, the perpetrators even broke through concrete to get to the wiring. The working lighting column has underground cables. The municipal authority’s representative, Giannis Paschos, said that he has filed a report with the police, that options for replacing the damaged cabling are being examined, and that a study is being prepared to install CCTV cameras at all the municipality’s sports facilities. The original plan was for 2027, and it is being considered whether the study can be completed by the end of 2026. Until then, the academies will train using just one of the goalposts.
If you have reported a fault and it has not yet been repaired, please let us know the street name and when the problem first arose. We will check with the local council.
Source: Municipality of Spata–Artemida, telephone directory (14/09/2026); LED street lighting contract 11398/19-4-2022; 4th Special Accountability Meeting of the Municipal Council, 29/10/2026; residents’ complaints as published in iRafina, 31/10 and 1/11/2026.
