Cyprus Mail 12 November 2024 - by Tom Cleaver
Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades on Tuesday promised that the highway connecting Paphos and Polis Chrysochous will be ready within the next three years, as local residents questioned the viability of the project after the contract for the first phase of its construction was torn up by the government a day earlier.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Polis Chrysochous, he said the government would now calculate the value of the work which has been carried out on the project so far before preparing the documents for a new tender.
The tender will then be outsourced to a new contractor, which, it is hoped, will finish the job.
“Our estimate is that three years from today, the project will be ready,” Vafeades said, adding that despite the fact that the contract for the first phase of the project, between Paphos and the village of Stroumbi, has been torn up, progress towards commencing the second phase, between Stroumbi and Polis Chrysochous, is going ahead as planned.
With this in mind, he said the second phase would now be built from Polis Chrysochous southwards, rather than the originally planned other way around.
Diko leader Nicholas Papadopoulos expressed his satisfaction that the government has proceeded “quickly” in taking the next steps, and called for road be completed as soon as possible.
“This is what we want to emphasise, and this is our commitment to the people of the Paphos district,” he added.
He also set the same three-year target as Vafeades, saying the road should be completed before the next presidential election, in January 2028.
Additionally, he poured scorn on the Nicos Anastasiades government, which had awarded the contract to Greek company Intrakat in 2021.
“Those who designed this offer, those who approved this offer, obviously in a way which presented particular problems, bear responsibility. It is not the first time that we see this weakness,” he said.
He added, “we have seen it in other public contracts, we saw it in the case of the Vasiliko liquefied natural gas terminal, we saw it in the case of the Larnaca marina, we saw it in the case of the road between Paphos and Polis Chrysochous,” referring to two other contracts signed by the Anastasiades government which were torn up this year by its successor.
The government suspended the contract up on Monday, saying that despite repeated reminders and warnings during regular meetings and through official letters, Intrakat reportedly failed to address the delays.
It added that even tasks initiated in the past eight months had not progressed as expected, despite conditions that allowed for uninterrupted work.
Polis Chrysochous mayor Yiotis Papachristofi had said earlier in the year that local residents were “at boiling point” over the project’s frequent delays.
