Xghajra residents suffering in silence

Trenching works to replace water mains, and eventually new pavements and the road surface began in Triq il-Knisja, Xghajra on August 28. This is an upgrade I most welcome.

A certain amount of inconvenience is understandable. What I believe is unacceptable is that the residents were not informed of such works that are to be carried out. Where it has become the practice for the ADT to publish road works either on the newspapers or on its website, these roadworks seem to have gone unnoticed.

The road now resembles a war zone. There is no need to mention that the debris is never being cleared by the contractor to minimise the inconvenience, nor are the trenches being properly filled so that residents can manoeuvre safely with their cars. When I tried to bring this to the attention of the enforcement officers of the construction environmental management, they referred me to the local council or ADT.

Legally Mepa are correct, as trenching works of less than three metres in depth do not fall under the Environmental Construction Site Management Regulations of 2007.

Maybe this is a weakness in our legislation as I am sure that the inconvenience that road works bring about to residents is as great (if not more) as that created by other construction works. An e-mail I sent to ADT to complain about all this havoc kept passing from one person to another but the situation since the works began is the same as the accompanying picture tells. Many residents just suffer in silence and fail to do anything either because they do not know better or because they know that their pleas will fall on deaf ears.