The contractor on the Larnaca–Dhekelia road project has requested yet another extension, pushing the works into a fourth year and leaving the city’s main tourist strip an active building site ahead of the summer season.
The project, which began in September 2020 with a budget of €17,657,220, was originally due for completion in March 2025. A revised deadline of end-April 2026 will also be missed following the contractor’s latest extension request.
Larnaca’s tourism body, ETAP, has written to President Christodoulides asking him to intervene personally to accelerate the works. In a letter dated 23 March, ETAP president Dinos Lefkaritis described the situation as no longer reasonable or justifiable, particularly given the additional time already granted.
“We are compelled to address you as a last resort in dealing with a problem that remains unresolved despite previous assurances and contacts,” Lefkaritis wrote.
Hotel businesses were recording increased cancellations, he said, while tour operators were reluctant to sign agreements as the image of a prolonged construction site was damaging the area’s reputation.
The situation was compounding difficulties already caused by cancellations linked to the ongoing Middle East conflict.
According to ETAP, open worksites in front of hotels, restaurants and leisure venues, alongside rubble and overgrown verges in sections already asphalted, presented a scene at odds with the revised project schedule — “a fact that intensifies concern about further delays,” Lefkaritis wrote.
He described the Larnaca-Dhekelia delays as symptomatic of a broader problem.
“The delays observed can no longer be considered either reasonable or justified, especially taking into account the additional time already granted,” he wrote, calling on the government to strengthen oversight of critical infrastructure projects and assign responsibilities as they arose.
“The local community and the tourism sector of Larnaca and our country more broadly cannot continue to bear the cost of these failures,” he said.
Larnaca mayor Andreas Vyras said the issue would be raised at the Municipal Council. “We said with ETAP that we should also meet the President of the Republic, because this delay cannot continue,” he said, adding that he did not consider the delays justified.
The Department of Public Works said it was evaluating the contractor’s claims for a new extension. Director Eleftherios Eleftheriou told Phileleftheros the contractor had also failed to deliver completed sections of the road in line with a phased-handover agreement.
“Because the contractor did not honour the agreement, he did not benefit and will not receive the amount that had been agreed,” Eleftheriou said. He added that if the contractor’s extension claims were not found to be justified, penalty clauses in the contract would be applied.
Work was now focused on sections in front of the hotels, Eleftheriou said, with the aim of completing those before summer.