City of Athens struggling to keep up with public works tearing up capital’s streets, sidewalks

The Athens Municipal Authority does not have the resources to keep up with more than 1,700 upgrades and repairs being carried out across its jurisdiction by public and private utility companies, which often leave a mess of broken streets and pavements behind, adding to residents’ frustration with the noise, dust and lack of sidewalks and parking, according to a city official. 

“Contractors can leave locations where they were carrying out work in a very poor state, with potholes and hasty patch-ups, despite the strict regulations in force,” Andreas Grammatikogiannis, Athens’ deputy mayor for infrastructure, has told Kathimerini.

The municipal authority introduced a new regulatory framework last July for public works carried out inside its jurisdiction, which, among other provisions, requires contractors to prove, with photographs, that they are leaving a work site in the same if not better state than it was before. It also states that holes cannot be dug on streets or pavements that have been recently repaved, unless it is for emergency repairs. Contractors additionally have to pay a security deposit of at least 30,000 euros per square meter of the area that will be affected and provide technical details of the exact work that will be carried out and how the work site will be restored afterwards.

‘How easy is it to control 1,700 ongoing projects? You’d have to do nothing else’

“Many contractors are complaining about the stricter framework, saying it’s giving them a hard time, but we plan to make it even stricter,” said Grammatikogiannis. 

In the meantime, he said, as the number of worksites rises with companies like water supplier EYDAP, power grid operator DEDDIE, the natural gas network supplier and telecoms companies carrying out ambitious and much-needed repairs and upgrades, the number of staff at the Municipality of Athens is “decreasing at an unabated pace.”

“We can’t hire more because we don’t have the funds,” he said.

The Athens municipal authority has seen its budget and jurisdiction over major infrastructure and development projects slashed since coming to power on January 1 after socialist-backed Haris Doukas defeated governing New Democracy’s incumbent mayor, Kostas Bakoyannis, in local elections in October.

“So, how easy is it to control 1,700 ongoing projects? You’d have to do nothing else,” said Grammatikogiannis.

“Athens is a big municipality. We can, for example, get license applications from companies for 200 locations for three months. The municipal authority will grant the licenses, but it has no way of knowing where each company’s work crew will be on any given day,” the city official said. 

In order to remedy this problem, the municipal authority is now seeking to develop a platform for licensing and monitoring the exact location and progress of work in public spaces. It will also allow city residents to file complaints if specific projects are creating problems in their area.

“Right now, if a citizen lodges a complaint, we need to dig through piles of paper and ask each [contractor] whether they are carrying out any work on a particular street. With the platform, we will be able to monitor the evolution of a project online and also to target our inspections more carefully,” said Grammatikogiannis.