I carry with me one of the most suspicious parts of the contract (on the construction of corridors), which reads that the construction company has the right to engage a specialist – or specialists – whose number will be agreed upon between the company and the Government, and who will have four directions of work: creating the specifics of the highways, creating of studies on the impact over the environment, creating of studies for the impact over the Ohrid region natural heritage protected by UNESCO, and a review of the highways’ specification. So, we have four directions, which would employ at least one coordinator and four specialists – five persons, that is – and the number may rise to 15, 20, or 50. The monthly salary for each of them is planned to be €36,000, VMRO-DPMNE MP and party Vice-Chair, Aleksandar Nikolovski said in an interview with Channel 5 TV.

For comparison, he offered the fact that the Chairwoman of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, earns about €24,000 per month, while “the specialists”, who won’t even be civil engineers, just mere supervisors, will earn much more.

Asked if the amount – which may reach €11 million – is included in the initial assessment of costs of €1.3 billion, Nikolovski said no.

“No, these are amounts that the Government has to pay additionally. This means that if they engage only one person for each position, and it takes five years to build the highways as the Government claims, that person would earn a total of €2,190,000. Multiplied by five, it amounts to a fantastic €11 million!”, he stated.