Today's papers are carrying a story to this effect.

The local hoteliers and restaurateurs are trying their best to keep the local and state governments to their word and honest (yeah, good luck with THAT), and they are calling for the project to be worked on 24 hours a day, since it seems the workers must get paid by the day since they are working at a snail's pace, and they apparently want the work to take as long as possible. Historically in Guerrero when projects go over budget no penalties are ever levied against the contractors, instead more money is awarded them. I suspect this is a common practice because of close ties between authorities and the construction companies that are often owned by politicians or their families or else influential political contributors.

Currently there are at least 10 guys plus all sorts of equipment working on the road. There are trucks dumping and spreading gravel to bring the road up to grade. There has been a guy working on his backhoe spreading and levelling gravel etc and it looks like they are still going ahead.

As they past the intersection to Las Margaritas there seems to be a plan in place so not sure what's up with that but it doesn't look like any slow down from what I can see.

¡Quizás mañana!

That's good to hear, because they had stopped working on it, and it was a hot topic among locals and on the local radio talk shows yesterday. Somebody must've gone to Chilpancingo for more money.

As they past the intersection to Las Margaritas there seems to be a plan in place so not sure what's up with that but it doesn't look like any slow down from what I can see.

¡Quizás mañana!

After having completely dug up the road from Kyoto plaza up almost to the old Blue Mamou building, workers no longer seem to be around and work seems to have ceased. Word on the street is that they "ran out of money and don't have anything left to pay the workers". I don't know if this is true, but I wonder if it may be part of the same thing alluded to by Rob in another message re end-of-term officials cashing in and moving on. Whatever the story, I pity the poor businesses/hotels that are now no longer accessible to their customers.

That is exactly what happened. The old "ran out of money" gag even though the budget appears inflated. Same thing as with the part of Avenida Morelos that goes around Laguna Las Salinas. It's been sitting there less than 50% finished for over a year. This was another project initiated by the same branch of the state government. Apparently some extreme corruption and ineptness is being allowed to run rampant. If I didn't know better (and I don't, come to think of it) I'd almost think some influential people were trying to harm Zihuatanejo's tourism on purpose to drive down property values so they can acquire it cheaply.