Government 'breaks promise' on roads

Labour Leader Alfred Sant yesterday accused the government of not keeping its word to finish road works on time.

Dr Sant told a news conference at Mdina Road, in Qormi, that in February of last year Minister Censu Galea had promised that the works would be finished on time with the least possible inconvenience caused.

The following June, Minister Jesmond Mugliett had promised that the government would closely monitor works so that they would not fall behind schedule. In reality, what was taking place was just the opposite of what the two ministers had promised, Dr Sant said.

The Roads Ministry said the completion of works on arterial and distributory roads in the centre of the island had always been planned for completion by September and that was when they would be ready. Dr Sant said in the morning that the work being carried out in Mdina Road, from near the Siggiewi Road roundabout to Qormi and from Luqa Road in Qormi to Qormi Road in Luqa, near the cargo terminal, was meant to have been wrapped up by the end of February. The road works, however, were still going on.

These works, Dr Sant noted, were not being financed by the EU but by the Italian Protocol negotiated by the Labour government in the 1970s.

The Labour Party's spokesman on road works, Charles Buhagiar, said the roads were having to be rebuilt because the Nationalist government, in its 17 years in office, had not kept them up to standard.

He said that because traffic was being diverted to secondary roads, some of these roads had collapsed. The government should not expect local councils to pay for the damage but should repair these roads itself, he argued.

The Roads Ministry said that between 1997 and 1998, the Labour government had spent about Lm5 million each year on roads. Since 1999, the Nationalist government had increased the expenditure to Lm6 million, not including the money coming from the Italian protocol.

It said that ironically, the roads being rebuilt with funds from the Italian protocol had been done up in a mediocre way by the Labour government in the 1980s.

The ministry said that since the Labour government signed a protocol with the Italian government in the 1970s, another four were signed, the last three by Nationalist governments.

For the first time a Nationalist government had ensured that Lm30 million from the protocol would be exclusively allocated to road improvements.