Sources inform ''Globes'' that tomorrow's meeting to decide the fate of Metropolitan Mass Transit System (MTS) consortium's franchise to build and operate Tel Aviv's planned light rail system has been postponed to next week, at the request of Minister of Transport Israel Katz.
Ministry of Finance officials have been hinting that the project committee would cancel the MTS's contract because of the two-year delay in securing financing for the project.
In response, MTS chairman and Africa-Israel CEO Izzy Cohen and MTS vice chairman Muesluem Yakisan of Siemens wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking for his urgent intervention on the matter.
Ministry of Transport officials said that the decision to postpone the meeting was due to the need to hold more internal meetings on the issue.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai wrote to Netanyahu today, calling on him "not to bury the project for many more years to come", and after more than NIS 1 billion had been spent on it. "We don’t have the time to waste, and there is no available or realistic alternative mass transit system in the Dan Region except for the light railway," he wrote.