Machines from Russia arrive, concrete from tunnels to be removed after all – Works to be completed by October 20

The road leveling works are being carried out in the Sarani tunnel with the help of Russian machines, said the head technical supervisor, Radomir Radicevic. According to him, the machines will correct the mistakes made in laying down the concrete road.

– The mistake was that there were, on certain sections, not in the entire length of the road, deviations from the levels defined by the plan and the standards. The contractor for Sarani and Brdjani was Planum and all the additional works on bringing the road back in line with the plan will be charged to them – Radicevic pointed out.

He added that Sarani would be completed in eight to ten days, which means 1,500 square meters being completed a day in two shifts and during the weekends. Immediately following the completion of this tunnel, the machine will start working on Brdjani.

– We expect everything to be completed by October 20 on both tunnels, and the length of the sections being repaired is around 2.5 kilometers – Radicevic said.

The tunnels on the Ljig-Preljina section of Corridor 11 have been the center of attention in the past weeks following the allegations that they are too low for trucks to pass through, later denied by the Corridors of Serbia.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlovic stated that the height of the tunnel was not the problem, that old machines had been used, causing the concrete road base to be done poorly, and that Planum needed to get new machines to repair the section – to remove a centimeter of the base and level the road.

On the other hand, the director of Planum, Ratomir Todorovic, said a few days ago in his interview for TV N1 that “neither are the tunnels too low, nor is the base uneven – no mistakes have been made and it’s all made up”.

Commenting on the statement by Mihajlovic that he was responsible for the poorly performed works on the tunnel, due to having deployed old machines, while new ones were being used in Russia, Todorovic answered that “only someone not versed in construction could say that”.

He also explained that the conception of the tunnels on Corridor 11 was such that new machines couldn’t even enter them. Deviations of 30 cm, as he said, are impossible, as everything in monitored and measured on a daily basis.

– It’s not like we’re making a tunnel to hand it over at one point. Instead, everything is being controlled every day – he said in his interview for N1. Planum has been operating in Serbia for 70 years and also abroad for the past 20 years. It’s one of the two Serbian companies, the other one being Energoprojekt, which raises tunnels, which is why, as Todorovic said, they get offended when someone tells them they can’t do their job, as minister Mihajlovic has done.

Vlada Republike Srbije

Ministarstvo građevinarstva, saobraćaja i infrastrukture Republike Srbije

Koridori Srbije d.o.o. Beograd

GP Planum Zemun

Sarani tunnel

Radomir Radicevic

Brdjani tunnel

Ljig Preljina section

Corridor 11

Zorana Mihajlovic

Ratomir Todorovic