Privatising the potholes

One of the best letters published in the local papers this year was a one-liner. Commenting on the state of the roads after a much-publicised repair blitz, a reader wrote, "The six-day war on potholes will go down in history as the war the potholes won".

I found that was a perfect way to sum up the situation. Following a wet and stormy January, the Malta Transport Authority (ADT) had grandly declared that it would be waging a six-day war on potholes.

The roads damaged by the recent rains would be tackled by an army of workers riding into battle on heavy-duty vehicles and armed to the teeth with asphalt. This offensive was to have been as successful as the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel defeated three other armies.

The potholes must have been quaking with fear when news got out that they would be stuffed into oblivion, no longer allowed to swallow up motorists into their maw.

All was set for the Crusade Against the Craters. If things went as planned we would have roads as smooth as babies' bottoms and a ribbon-cutting ceremony where Roads Minister Austin Gatt could unveil a plaque commemorating the vanquishing of Malta's largest pothole. Except that things didn't go exactly as planned.

Although the potholes were out in the open and not concealed in camouflage gear, it seems that the ADT troops just couldn't locate them all. And whenever they were successfully identified and engaged in direct combat, the repair-workers' weapons (or the hot or cold asphalt) proved to be woefully ineffective. In quite a few cases, whatever had been thrown down those road pits, came right back up to be dispersed under the wheels of vehicles driving over them. The result? The War That the Potholes Won. Potholes 100 - ADT Nil.

Long-suffering drivers and road-users weren't surprised at the defeat of the Repair Army. Having had their rims mangled beyond repair by rutted roads and putting up with endless traffic detours while the Water Services Department ripped up roads which had been resurfaced a few days back, they had got accustomed to the awful state of the roads network.

They also had a pretty good idea of why these occasional forays into road-improvement never work out. It's all due to poor quality workmanship, the substandard materials used in these patch-up jobs and the lack of co-ordination of the entities entrusted with carrying out the works.

However, the over-arching reason for the chaos is the way that the contractors responsible for these shoddy works never seem to be penalised. If they are, they don't show signs of being suitably chastened and humbled into providing a better service or product the next time round.

Till now, the same outfits which have consistently botched up the works they should have been repairing, have continued to be awarded other work contracts and being paid for the mess they create.

To my mind, the solution to this has everything to do with stamping out mismanagement and abuse - whether this occurs in the public sector or in the private sector entrusted to carry out works on the road infrastructure. If cowboy contractors continue to be rewarded for their ineptness by being paid from public funds, there will be no deterrent for them to stop getting it wrong.

In view of this, Austin Gatt's announcement that the government intends to move towards a system where private contractors would be responsible for roads is quite puzzling. The system proposed is not outright privatisation - where the contractors would have full control of the roads in question and the right to charge drivers for using them. That would be a step too far even for our home-grown, male version of Margaret Thatcher.

What Gatt is suggesting is more on the lines of a management agreement where a private contractor is engaged to carry out the building, repair and maintenance according to pre-defined standards for a period of time such as 25 years.

At face value, this doesn't sound like a bad idea. It will do away with the necessity of the government making a call for tenders every time a job of a certain magnitude or value needs to get done.

However, I can't help wondering how a government which has had such a distinct lack of success in penalising contractors who have carried out shoddy works, expects to start doing so now.

If no-one has been able to get a handle on the situation when contractors were engaged for one-off jobs or for short periods of time, what guarantee do we have that the government will be able to exercise some form of control or discipline on contractors who practically have ownership of a road for its lifetime? None at all.

Once more, it looks like it's going to be game, set and match to the potholes.