The tourist season is beginning and the roads are still like bombed-out zones

No work has been done on the ‘bombed-out’ roads in the north of the island even though a contract for their repair was signed in January 2018. Local media cameras have captured dozens of glaring cases of dangerous subsidence and yet at the start of the tourist season the roads still remain in the same condition. Deputy Regional Governor Nikoletta Pandi told Enimerosi that work hasn’t started because first of all they had to wait for weather conditions to improve and for the winter rain to die down and following that they had to wait for the Easter period to pass.

When is work going to begin?

When asked when work was going to begin, Ms. Pandi said that the contractor has a written order to start. This was expected to happen within the next few days.

We asked her if the funds being made available by the Regional Administration were sufficient and she replied, “At the moment the amount of 1.8 million has already been approved in the signed contract (600,000 for each of the three areas – north, south and central).” With all the damage to the roads it’s obvious that this isn’t enough even for pebbles. However, the Deputy Governor responded that apart from that money there are also contracts for 1.8m for flood defences and 2m to cover damage repair from the adverse weather conditions in Corfu in November.

Is there any news from the Minister Christos Spirtzis?

Nikoletta Pandi replied, “The Ionian Islands Region requested 19m from the Infrastructure and Transport Minister. The Minister took the file and told us that the funds would be made available over a period of three years.”

Following the meeting with the Minister, Corfu MP Kostas Pavlidis told Enimerosi that Mr. Spirtzis had let it be understood that funds would immediately be approved for serious problems on the road network. The Deputy Governor said, “We haven’t heard anything yet. We’re still waiting.”