The road to the Teferič neighbourhood in Kisela Voda is cracking apart and the ground beneath it is moving. The transport ministry is taking over the remediation, and deputy prime minister and minister Aleksandar Nikoloski says he expects the problem solved in about a year.

The reasoning for why the ministry is taking the case is technical: the ground movement is complex and by its nature similar to what the authorities faced on the Kičevo-Ohrid motorway. „This is a fairly complex issue where a high level of expertise is needed. That is why we thought it was good for the transport ministry to take it over, with the experts we have”, Nikoloski said.

The remediation will involve staff from the ministry and from the Public Enterprise for State Roads, plus additional experts if needed. The tender procedure for selecting a contractor should close around 20 August, after which the selection and the start of works on site follow.

A year, with an asterisk

The deadline the minister gives comes with its own caveat, spoken in the same sentence: part of the work needs dry ground. „We're allowing a year, but we also need to see what the winter is going to be like. The assumption is that in a year it should be finished properly.”

Translated into the language of Teferič residents - the deadline holds if the weather cooperates. Landslides, unfortunately, do not run on that calendar; they move most in exactly the wet months, meaning in the period when the contractor will not be able to work. If the tender closes on 20 August and the selection takes a few weeks, the first real works on site land towards the end of the dry-ground season.

A small project, a big difference

Nikoloski himself admitted that in budget terms this is not a big project - it is more of an engineering and technical undertaking. And that is precisely where something worth noting sits. The work had not stalled over money. It stalled because the question of whose problem it was - the municipality's, the city's or the ministry's - had to be settled before the problem itself.

The asphalt, meanwhile, did not wait. The crack on the road to Teferič is not a new phenomenon for residents, and it grows every season while the jurisdictions are being demarcated. This year there is at least the name of an institution standing behind a solution, and a tender date. That is more than there was yesterday - and less than there should have been long ago.