The 335Km road from Addis Abeba to Jimma that the Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA) contracted to DRAGADOS J&P, a Spanish and Greek joint venture, and which will cost 700 million Br to construct, will not be delivered a month from now as was previously planned, sources from ERA disclosed.

The contract of building an asphalt road from Addis Abeba to the coffee producing area of Jimma was given to DRAGADOS in October 1999 with the agreement that it would finish building and commission the road by December 2006.

But according to sources from ERA, only 75Km of the 335Km road have been commissioned so far. The same sources told Fortune that DRAGADOS has finished building another 111Km of road, but that the Authority is still inspecting the work.

The last 149Km are still under construction, said an engineer from the Authority, adding that no one believes the road will be finished in a year let alone a month.

On the 111Km stretch of road currently being inspected, a 35Km section leading from Deneba to Sendabo was concluded seven months ago, but the road was not commissioned and travellers were forced to use an alternative route of bad quality.

“They even went as far as digging up the part that connects the newly built road to the previous one so that people did not illegally use it,” said Ahmed Ababia, a Jimma town resident. He wondered why the Authority did not want to open the road for use immediately.

Fortune’s attempts at getting comment from Company’s Project Manager, Costas Nearacho, on why DRAGADOS was not able to finish the road as agreed, were not successful.

“After four years of building, the work was suspended due to a design problem,” an official from ERA told Fortune.

But, he said, the problem was solved by October 2002 and they had restarted the work. The Official said even with this delay taken into consideration, there was still a belief that the project would be finalized by December 2006.

“But we cannot claim that now,” he said.

In addition to the Addis Abeba – Jimma road that DRAGADOS is trying to complete, the Company is also trying to finish building a road leading from Tarmaber to Kombolcha in Amhara Regional State. But due to disagreements with workers, this project too has taken longer than first agreed upon, sources from ERA said.