‘Management by crisis’ roadworks are leading to serious repercussions, PN says
On Wednesday, the Nationalist Party accused the government and Infrastructure Malta of not planning properly for necessary road works, saying that this “management by crisis” is causing frustration and inconvenience to motorists and residents alike.
PN spokespersons were addressing journalists at Triq ilFortizza tal-Mosta, which has been closed for the last few days due to work on the power distribution network.
“And it is not the only one,” Nationalist MP Mark Anthony Sammut said.
This cannot be blamed on the contractor, who carried out good work, Sammut said. Rather, the road had to be dug up once more due to lack of planning. Every few years and even months, roads must be redone, resulting in inconvenience to people and traffic and the wastage of money.
He went on to mention other roads closed due to road works, such as Triq id-Durumblat, also in Mosta, and Triq il-Pantar, in Lija, and said that these all confirm that government is incompetent, lacks a plan, and lacks foresight.
PN MP Joe Giglio, who excused himself for being late, saying that he encountered with heavy traffic and closed roads, said that whilst maintaining roads is a good exercise, such work should be planned properly.
The consequences of this incompetence are threefold, Giglio said. Firstly, taxpayer money should be used only once for a project and not have to be used again to redo it, he said. He added that this is unjustified use of taxpayer money, which should be used optimally, and that such infrastructure projects must be of good quality from the start.
Giglio went on to say that the redoing of such road works also causes a second inconvenience following the first project. He added that this contributes to the country’s traffic situation and increases it.
Finally, Giglio said that redoing projects has various environmental impacts from the emissions of the heavy vehicles used to carry out the project again, the dust raised by the works, and noise pollution to surrounding areas.
He said that all these are the negative repercussions of a lack of planning, lack of coordination and incompetence.
PN MEP Candidate Louise Anne Pulis called the redoing of roads all over the country a “national farce”. She said that such road works cause problems for people with mobility problems, and for parents of small children.
Pulis added that it also causes problems for motorists, locals and even business owners whose shops are difficult to access. She added that the money for repeated road works could have been used to fund other projects.
The MEP candidate said that the air quality affects our health and remarked that the air quality control stations had been turned off in September and were never switched back on. She went on to say that the tarmac factory in San Ġwann has been working for longer hours, subjecting the locals to toxic fumes with a number of risks to health and a poor quality of life.
Pulis said that we deserve better and that our standards should be on par with European ones.