Actions before consultations

Let’s face the prevailing situation. Gozitans and Maltese are fully aware of which roads lead to Gozo.

Foreign visitors face an uncommon situation. From whichever locality they set out from, any of the Coast, Burmarrad, or Manikata roads lead towards the Ċirkewwa terminal. Their final destination comprises a few kilometres along Għadira bay towards Ċirkewwa.

The Gozo Ministry carries out all infrastructure works that concern Gozo. Then they forget or even neglect the screaming situation of how many vehicles cross over to Gozo. All vehicles and transport from Malta to Gozo have to go through Ċirkewwa.

Access from these roads falls under the responsibility of Transport Malta (TM), which in January welcomed a new minister. In a recent reshuffle, Prime Minister replaced former Minister Aaron Farrugia with newly promoted Minister Chris Bonett.

Immediately Minister Bonett took it to task to tackle the one lane leading to Ċirkewwa from the Armier roundabout to add another lane. So we have a scenario within the government cabinet, where most probably the TM minister took a decision which directly affects access to Gozo without consulting the Gozo minister.

Is the newly appointed TM minister fully aware of the bottlenecks which commuters to Gozo are facing? I wonder, and all indications are that he is acting instinctively.

I am subject to be corrected, but it seems Minister Bonett sidelined the CEO of Infrastructure Malta. So much so when The Shift asked Ivan Falzon, the CEO of Infrastructure Malta, if the contract was awarded by direct order and whether any safety study had been carried out on the proposed changes, the CEO did not reply.

Such a drastic move by the minister to have an extra lane at Ċirkewwa may lead to further accidents and fatalities. This decision reverses the scope of the original road’s single-lane configuration, which was designed and built in 2012 by the previous government with European Union funds as a deliberate traffic-calming measure.

This work will remove central strip barriers to divide the road into three carriageways instead of the current two. Relatively new steel barriers costing hundreds of thousands of euro are being dismantled and thrown away.

This extra lane will not take any additional land, will not involve construction of any extension to the existing road and will not involve any new tarmac. The government is forking out €7 million of taxpayers’ money on these two kilometres of road reconfiguration between the Armier roundabout and Ċirkewwa. Considering that the nature of the works is minor, a planning permit is not required.

Before the 2012 works, many accidents had taken place on the road, including several fatal ones.

“In 2012, when the previous government rebuilt this road, road experts designed it so that cars could not speed up to reach a departing ferry. That is why it was a single lane. Now this new minister wants to reverse the situation by creating a major accident-prone road because of possible speeding,” an expert told The Shift.

But was the one lane to Ċirkewwa, the underlying problem to commuter and vehicles reaching Ċirkewwa? I can assure the minister that this is far from the truth. When there is a major event in Gozo such as a long weekend, Carnival, Easter and Christmas, the queue of vehicles waiting to reach Gozo will spill over on to this one lane and this obstructs any other vehicles including buses to reach the terminal.

If the minister really wanted to keep this lane to the terminal reachable to other commuters and vehicles, then it would have been more appropriate to provide abundant parking space for the vehicles waiting to board the ferries. Here I may remind the ministers for Transport Malta and Gozo that the situation is being heightened by a shortage of ferries, especially when there are only three vessels operating.

The fourth ferry, the Greek 35year-old museum piece Nickolaus, which this government provided to the Gozitans, is not adequate. No planning is in place by this government to provide eco-friendly ferries to meet the commuting demand of Gozitans and visitors, especially during weekends.

I am repeating this because the Gozo Ministry and the Gozo Regional Development Authority (GRDA) are still uninvolved in this demanding situation. The vessels MV Gaudos, MV Malita and MV Ta’ Pinu commissioned in 1996 are now past their operative span. These are “outdated fuel-guzzlers” and have to be upgraded to current operating standards or replaced. The condition of the MV Nickolaus is below standard to the degree that the vessel can only carry half the commissioned passengers because of safety concerns. The Government should never have leased this ferry at €13,000 daily.

Also, neither the government nor the opposition have given enough attention to the provision of a fast ferry, which holds also vehicles to Valletta provided that adequate berthing facilities are available.

So will this outrageous amount of €7 million be beneficial and improve access to the Gozo ferries? While the new minister said the reconfiguration would create two carriageways for motorists heading towards the Gozo ferry, road safety experts said this was “madness”.

During 2022, the number of vehicles crossing over to Gozo was 988,955. This exceeded the 2021 crossings by 13.7%. During 2023, at this rate, more than a million vehicles would have crossed to Gozo.

The twin decked vessels MV Ta’ Pinu and MV Malita carried the most vehicles to Gozo at 33% and 30% respectively in 2022. The heaviest traffic flow from Ċirkewwa was on Fridays and Saturdays. These are the ferries which the previous government provided over fifteen years ago, and which are still serving and supporting access to Gozo.

If Infrastructure Malta considered seriously this National Statistics Office (NSO) information, they could have redirected this €7 million spending rampage towards other more beneficial projects.

During these ten years in government, the Transport Malta and Gozo Ministers showed a lack of synergy and cooperation. The Prime Minister is affirming that Gozo is not on his priority list. Soon this precarious situation will cave in and Gozitans, jointly with business and tourism sectors, will suffer the consequences. It’s time to wake up before it’s too late!