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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 7 March 2019:
Libya’s Ministry of Transport announced on Tuesday that it had signed a LD 2.25 million contract with Turkish company Tamel to maintain the pavement of Tripoli’s main corniche strip.
The contract, which the Ministry says was won on the basis of a tender process involving several specialized companies, is worth LD 2 25 million and entails a study and design of the corniche pavement and will take 10 months to prepare.
Meanwhile, the Ministry said that its Ports and Maritime Authority will conduct quick maintenance work on the Corniche pavement to reduce the aggravation of the problem until the completion of studies and designs aimed at addressing the problem once and for all.
It will be pointed that the pavement at Tripoli’s popular seafront promenade has started to collapse with a number of dangerous depressions and small sinkholes appearing. In some parts of the pavement the seawater is visible.
The contract with the Turkish company is a rare example of a new construction contract being awarded by the Libyan state post the 2011 revolution.
It will be recalled that Tripoli Council had called on the Ministry to urgently repair the main cornishe pavement, and the Ministry has used this urgent call as a justification for awarding a new multi-million contract to a foreign company at a time of economic austerity and hard currency shortage.
The awarding of the contract to a foreign company will no doubt raise furtger eyebrows and suspicions in Libya. Libyans will ask why couldn’t a Libyan company have fixed the pavement for US$ 2.25 million.
It will also be recalled that a large number of foreign contractors, including Turkish companies, have many stalled projects. Many are owed millions and some have been seeking compensation at the Paris Court of Arbitration.
