Minister requests PAC debate

Transport Minister Censu Galea said yesterday he was calling on the House Public Accounts Committee to urgently debate the report on road works issued by the National Audit Office last week.

Mr Galea said in parliament he was surprised at how the people who drew up the report and called for updated tendering procedures had not noticed the changes which were actually started nearly five years ago.

The tendering process that was in use now was different, he said, but seven or eight of the road projects which the audit office had examined were based on tenders issued before the procedure was changed.

Referring to an editorial in The Times yesterday, the minister said that he did not think it would be proper for an internal inquiry to be conducted by the ministry or the transport authority. He felt the audit report should be discussed in the PAC where the report writers could also explain their findings and the ministry could explain the changes implemented since the Cabinet in 1999 agreed to his request for a change in the tendering procedure.

Earlier in the sitting, opposition infrastructure spokesman Charles Buhagiar said the shortcomings in the Roads Directorate highlighted by the auditor-general in his report reflected the complaints of the opposition and the general public.

The root of the complaints on cost overruns and delays in road building works was long-standing manpower problems in the directorate and the former Roads Department which the Nationalist government had failed to sufficiently address, he said.

He agreed with the auditor on the need for proper studies to be carried out before calls for tenders for road works were issued. It also needed to be ensured that the utility providers worked together ahead of road building works - a situation, he acknowledged, which was not easy because the utility providers had their own programmes of works. It was for this reason that the Labour government in 1997 had set up a coordinating unit, which this government had scrapped.

Mr Buhagiar also insisted that contractors needed road-building expertise. Those who had worked on the road leading to Mater Dei Hospital could be described as among the best, but the project had still fallen behind.

The auditor-general was also right to insist on proper project management. There should be good project managers on every road project, although admittedly the civil engineers involved were rather young and the university road engineering course had not been underway for long. If necessary the government should import experienced project managers for some time.

In fairness to the directorate, it should be pointed out that a number of improvements had been made since the auditors from the National Audit Office carried out their inspections.

Mr Galea said road works coordination in the past was very different from what Mr Buhagiar had made it out to be.

It was true there were delays in road works and these had to be investigated at all times. It was not acceptable for the Roads Directorate to send a cheque to another government corporation which took weeks to verify it, for example.

Road works were now being better planned and the government and the transport authority were committed to ensuring that time frames were observed as far as possible.

He agreed there was a shortage of people professionally trained in road construction work. The first group of students doing an MSc course in road construction was still at university.

He hoped, therefore, that no excuses were found if professionally trained foreigners started working in this sector.

He said that road works would be given a further boost this year thanks to an injection of €30 million through the Italian financial protocol.

The estimates were later approved after a division, the opposition voting against.