Ethiopia dam official blames construction delays on conglomerate METEC

Construction of a $4-billion dam at the heart of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter has been delayed five years as engineers had to replace shoddy work by a conglomerate pulled off the job last year, a project official said. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, announced in 2011, was designed to generate more than 6,000 megawatts in a region that struggles to produce enough energy, but has proved a lightning rod for tensions in both Ethiopia and Egypt. “We have removed some of the steelworks on bottom outlets and replaced them with new ones,” Belachew Kassa, the site coordinator and deputy head of the project, told Reuters during a trip to the dam last week.

Source: yahoo.com/news