Social Democrat MPs have questioned the government over the "postponement of essential safety work to the Guadiana bridge."
Algarve MPs José Carlos Barros and Cristóvão Norte have asked about the "successive and unacceptable" postponement of maintenance and rehabilitation work at the Guadiana International Bridge.
Structural work to the bridge and the access viaduct was announced in September 2015 and was to cost €13 million to be shared with Spain in the joint project covered by the Portuguese-Spanish Joint Technical Committee.
"The truth," the Social Democrats said today, "is that, despite the announcement of the launch of a public tender in September 2015 - and, more recently, Infrastructures of Portugal said the work would start in the third quarter of 2016 - the work has not yet begun."
The MPs also questioned the government about one of the steel cables which has failed. In May 2016 protests were registered by local Vila Real de Santo António and Castro Marim coucillors who demanded its replacement due to safety worries.
Infraestruturas de Portugal said there was nothing to worry about but locals are not best pleased that safety may be compromised, especially with the high traffic volume in the tourist season.
The infrastructure company added that “safety is not an issue” as the broken cable is but one of 37 such cables that hold the bridge in place. Let's hope their experts are right.
The State-owned company explained that it is "evaluating proposals" submitted under an international tender launched in 2015 for the repair and maintenance work, the third such intervention in 25 years.
The company seems not to have chosen a contractor to undertake the specialist work which was to start in the third quarter of 2016, later amended to the first quarter of 2017.
We await minister Pedro Marques’ announcement as to a start date, with tense anticipation seldom recorded in the heady world of civil engineering.
