The Government is expected to hold an event to mark the beginning of construction of the Bechtel highways – along the east – west corridor 8. Government officials already held one such event, for the Tetovo – Gostivar highway, but it’s still not clear when actual construction will begin – the highways have no construction plans, and the land still hasn’t been purchased or expropriated.
– We begin implementing the contract on April 22nd. This practically means that the contractor will begin preparatory work, scouting out and filming the area, projecting, preparing the locations for worker camps and the sites for the construction machines, and preparing the spatial plans, the Transportation Ministry said.

The 1.3 billion USD contract is highly controversial because it was awarded in a no-bid procedure, which means no financial support from the European Union, and Bechtel demands that Macedonia changes a number of laws, including extending the work week from 40 to 60 hours. If the country fails to do so, it will have to pay steep fines.

We will all be forced to pay for the potential mistakes. The citizens will pay for everything that goes wrong. We will continue to point out to the problems with the contract, as well as the price items that are left as TBD – to be determined, and will increase the cost at least twice the price that was announced, said opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski, whose VMRO-DPMNE party apparently has a copy of the secretive contract, provided by whistleblowers.

His deputy Aleksandar Nikoloski said that, under the contract, 70 percent of the workers hired on the sites will be foreigners. He said that the contract includes a plan that provides for the ration of domestic to foreign workers, and that it’s much different from what Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski promised – that half of the workers will be domestic.

On top of this issue, the workers hired by Bechtel from abroad will be exempt from the obligation to seek a work permit and a residential permit. This means that from the moment they land, they will have work permits waiting for them. This will make it possible for people who are a security risk to infiltrate the country, Nikoloski said, pointing to yet another of the laws that will be skewed for Bechtel.