Thousands of motorists have endured frustrating delays after workers botched resurfacing work on Eastern Road.

And last night Minister of Works Desmond Bannister promised he would hold utilities companies to account for the “embarrassing” delays on one of the most important roads into Nassau.

Resurfacing work on Eastern Road began nearly two weeks ago and was scheduled to finish tomorrow.

Instead, the blunders will mean motorists will have to endure detours and delays probably until the end of the week.

“It is hugely embarrassing,” Mr Bannister said last night.

“We had an agreement with the utility companies which they haven’t kept to.”

The first major issue arose when Water and Sewerage came on the resurfacing site and had to do works leading to six properties adjacent to the area being worked on.

“That cost us one day,” said Mr Bannister.

“Unfortunately they did not do a good job and when we checked that cost another day.”

Motorists had hoped come Wednesday last week that the resurfacing appeared to be coming to an end when some major tarmac was laid. It proved to be a false dawn.

“Unfortunately we found they had cut off some BTC lines and we had to go in and repair that,” said Mr Bannister.

That meant road which had seen new tarmac laid down had to be dug up.

“That cost us another two days. It is very embarrassing for us,” he said.

Fortunately equipment which could have remained idle while the mistakes were corrected was switched to other works.

“It has been more annoying than costly,” said Mr Bannister.

“The annoyance for drivers has been my main concern. The utilities have not been as effective as they should have been and I am going to hold them to account.

“We expect them to start pouring on Monday and hopefully by the end of the week we will have a paved road.”