The TRNC government has cancelled, for a second time a public tender for construction works for the Derinya and Aplic border crossings points.
No offers were made in time for the 15 August deadline to construct car parks and do some remedial work for the two border crossing areas.
Halil Talaykurt, Chairman of the Central Bidding Commission (MİK), who spoke to Turkish Cypriot daily ‘Yeni Duzen’ about the process, said that no contractor firm participated in the 3 different tenders that ended last Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Contractors’ Association Cafer Gurcafar (photo left) although prices had been agreed with Prime Minister Tufan Erhurman, the TL continued to devalue, thus no contractors had submitted any offers for the tenders. The Prime Minister can re-launch the tenders after 21 working days from the closing date of the previous tender.
Turkish Cypriot spokesman for the Bi-communal Famagusta Initiative, Dr Okan Dagli, accused the government of launching phoney tenders which inevitably brought no results.
Recently Dagli criticised the fact that the tenders were being held under conditions that no bidder can meet and blamed the Turkish Cypriot side for not showing willingness to open the Derinya checkpoint, predicting that “with such a mentality, the checkpoint won’t open, not even by the end of the year.”
The first tenders that were launched ended with no results on July 18, and a new round was opened which also failed to find bidders.
In 2015 the two Cypriot community leaders had agreed to open a crossing point in Derinya, and one in the Lefke region as part of a number of confidence building measures at the start of the renewed Cyprus negotiations.
Yeni Duzen
