When the local councils were set up, they were supposed to take over the maintenance and repair of the roads.
A look around shows they have failed magnificently – cracks, potholes, invisible markings, subsiding roads – and so on and so forth.
The councils argue they have been starved of funds by both governments and consequently cannot repair the roads. Then they argue that some roads are the government's responsibility.
The government, on its part, tends to focus on building roads anew – such as the PN governments did with the roads to the North of Malta. Some residential roads were done from scratch such as the main street in Fgura and the Marsascala bypass but otherwise the roads have remained to deteriorate.
Even the prime minister seems to have at last woken up to this situation. Speaking at Mosta on Sunday he spoke about the situation in Zejtun where an important road, Triq Cachia Zammit, has been for months impassable due to road works whereas a great feast was organized because the Kappara Junction restoration was completed.
Some months ago, following the election, there were rumours that the government was about to take responsibility for road works from the councils back to the Works Department.
When the government was questioned about this in Parliament, it denied the rumours.
Now if we analyse the prime minister's words on Sunday, there seems to be something coming which does not look like retaining the same local council structure.
Muscat focused on the contractors which take on local council tenders and get the contracts by tendering a low price. Then they amass contracts and spread their workers across the jobs. That is why you sometimes see workers on a site and they disappear the next day: you will find them on another site.
There is the €700 million electoral commitment to redo all the roads in Malta. Six months after the election, nothing has materialized so far except for some generic plan to set up a specialized agency to which it would seem the prime minister referred to on Sunday.
The immediate comment we want to make in this regard is that this agency is taking its own sweet time while the roads continue to deteriorate with the usual end of winter pot holes which will be filled in only to reappear.
We think however that the road management by the local councils has failed big time and it is high time that the government absolves them of this responsibility and takes it back. As we have seen from the Kappara Junction and the sundry works undertaken by Transport Malta to ease traffic around roundabouts, Transport Malta is capable of taking on this hard task.
We fail to see how the creation of a new agency under a different minister can solve an already difficult situation.
from The Malta Independent http://ift.tt/2Gws9cD
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