Government insists Cyfield asked for 17-year extension for Nicosia ring road (Update 2)

The government on Wednesday insisted that reports the construction contractor Cyfield had requested a 17-and-a-half-year extension to the time allotted for the Nicosia ring road’s construction are true.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail, transport ministry spokeswoman Fani Papademetriou explained that Cyfield had filed a litany of requests for extensions to the project, citing various hindrances on the way.

These in turn added up to a total of 6,363 days – around 17 and a half years in total.

Those requests were filed citing issues such as the construction site not being ready in time, overhead electricity pylons not having been moved, and issues related to rainwater drainage on the road’s central reservation.

Such an extension would have put the expected date of completion back from the originally agreed date of March 23, 2023, to sometime in 2040.

However, as Papademetriou explained and minister Alexis Vafeades later reiterated, the Committee on Changes and Claims had not acquiesced to Cyfield’s request and had instead allowed for an extension until June 16 this year.

“All the contractor’s demands have been assessed and judged, and the date of completion has been agreed for this project. That date is June 16. We expect the project to be delivered soon and it will be given to the Cypriot taxpayers to use,” Vafeades said.

Should the ring road not be completed by that date, the committee will then have the right to impose a €5,500 fine on Cyfield every single day until the road is complete and operational.

But Cyfield owner Kyriakos Chrysochos was equally insistent that his company had not requested a 17-and-a-half-year extension to the time allotted.

Speaking to CyBC radio, he said reports of such a request were “jokes”, and that the only extension to be requested was the one to which the Committee on Changes and Claims had acquiesced, until June 16 this year.

He added that he is sure the ring road will be completed before August.

Asked about the reports of a 17-and-a-half-year extension, he said “I cannot know what different government departments wrote between each other, but I know what my company requested.”

He added that his company had requested a “reasonable” extension, and said the time required for the ring road to be completed “will be very short”.

“This whole ’17 years’ thing is funny. Really funny,” he added.

He went on to criticise the “bureaucratic procedures” which are present in the contract.  “There are projects which could have been completed in half the time allowed by the contract, but which are not finished because of red tape.”

For this reason, he said, his company is “thinking of not making another offer to carry out a public project again because of this situation”.

“In the end, there will be no Cypriot companies interested in carrying out public works if the tender process and the contracts signed by the public works department are not modernised,” he said.

“We are very concerned about this. All the companies which work with the public sector lose money,” he said, adding that payments are often made late “due to bureaucratic procedures”.

“You do realise these hard times we have been through and how important it is to not get paid for your time. Many times, it is six months before we get paid for the work we do.”

The contract for the ring road’s construction is reportedly worth upwards of €60 million plus VAT.