The Sunday Times (January 23) carried my article entitled ‘Minding our gap’, which listed the difficulties the Gozitan community encounters every day due to the absence of a permanent road link between Gozo and Malta.
In the article I also mentioned the notion of an undersea tunnel.
The statistics of the Eiksund Tunnel, which to date is the world’s deepest undersea tunnel, were compared to the requirements for our channel. Constructing this 7.77 km-long tunnel at 287 metres below sea level had cost the Norwegian Public Roads Administration NOK 500 million, which is equivalent to around €65 million.
What amazed me was the rapid sequence of events that followed my article.
On January 29, the Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi inaugurated a wind turbine at the FXB factory in Xewkija. However, by the next morning the turbine was gone with the wind and the front page news was FXB chairman Joe Borg’s comment on the need for a permanent road between Malta and Gozo.
If this was not enough, Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said stole The Times’ headlines on January 31, saying the tunnel was his childhood dream, and was his and only his proposal.
Since then we have witnessed a barrage of comments in the media lest we forget it was Said’s personal proposal.
Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan. Plagiarism is not a crime but it is disapproved on moral grounds.
How can the current administration be trusted when over the past two decades it has invested heavily in the Gozo Channel Company with a quarter of a billion euros on the ferries, the Mġarr terminal, and the so far incomplete Cirkewwa terminal? Never was there any mention of the possibility of a fixed link.
Isn’t it a huge coincidence that after 23 years of dead silence, a tsunami of media comments on the fixed link proposal followed my article? Is it my imagination that they keep repeating that Borg’s timely allusion to the permanent road kick-started the much needed debate?
I assure people that this debate is what I wished for when I wrote the article and I have no intention of assuming ownership of the idea as this has been discussed by all Gozitan commuters umpteen times, especially during eventful crossings.
The positive thing about all this is that most of us are in favour of a permanent link, and therefore let us now confirm our impression with the Gozitan electorate and have a responsible, mature debate on the issue rather than squabbling for credit.
No wonder the possibility of the fixed link was described by Said as his “childhood dream”, because it is the dream of every Gozitan youth who has to travel daily, first for schooling and then for work. The toll is becoming quite costly, as the absence of such a link is leaving Gozo brain and skill drained.
The business community in Gozo is feeling abandoned by the current administration and it would be a huge mistake if the permanent link option is abused or thrown in as a lifesaving device.
Gozo needs long-term strategies, not the sudden realisation of dreams. My suggestion was to formulate a long-term contingency plan in order to prepare ourselves for the end of the lifecycle of the current ferries.
Proper studies and long-term aims should precede political opportunism and media-grabbing activism.
We are still eagerly awaiting a clear, honest declaration of the budget entrusted to Transport Malta with the timeframe to complete the necessary feasibility studies. Otherwise it will be difficult to convince us that this was not another political gimmick.
Or could this wake-up call from his childhood dream be a knee jerk reaction to the fact that the author of the article happens to be a prospective Labour candidate?