Skopje, 12 April 2023 (MIA) – The Corridor VIII and X-d motorways will be built with or without the legal amendments of the eight laws which are currently in parliamentary procedure, our interest is to build faster and cheaper, said First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Political System and Inter-Community Relations Artan Grubi, who is also the coordinator for the construction of the motorway sections.

According to Grubi, if the working week of the employees working on the construction of the corridors is 60 hours a week, as requested by contractor Bechtel-Enka, the project will be realized in 4.7 years and will be cheaper, if it is 40 hours a week then construction will last 6 years and will be more expensive. It is not an issue of paying penalties if the working week is not 60 hours, but, Grubi said, the realization of the project will be slower.

According to the Deputy PM, wherever the Bechtel-Enka consortium has worked in the past, the working week has been 60 hours and the workers provided written consent to work those hours and be paid extra.

“Our interest as a country is for these motorways to be cheaper and to be built faster, and this depends precisely on the adoption of the eight laws. They will enable a faster expropriation and a faster and cheaper construction,” said Grubi at Wednesday’s meeting with the media.

Grubi stated that the contract for the construction is classified upon the request of Bechtel-Enka, which is why they are not allowed to publish details.

According to Minister of Economy Kreshnik Bekteshi, the contract is classified because the consortium’s operations are a trade secret, and publishing parts of the contract could affect their stocks.

The calculation which sets the price of the project to EUR 1.3 billion was made on the basis of the proposed route by Bechtel-Enka and a feasibility study, which shows that 55 percent of the land on the route is privately owned, with 45 percent owned by the state.

If the amendments are adopted, according to Bechtel-Enka’s predictions, 23 kilometers of motorway would be built per year, compared to 5.8 kilometers of motorway built annually in the country thus far. The contractor will have to pay additional costs if the deadline isn’t met.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Grubi, the expenses for the event which marked the beginning of the realization of the project were paid by the contractor. The Deputy PM announced that construction on Corridor VIII will officially begin on April 22, while the works on Corridor X-d will begin on May 12.

Photo: MIA