The government is willing to increase the rates it pays for residential roadworks to make up for the steep rise in the cost of asphalt, after contractors warned they would halt works unless the rateswere revised.

Although the measure would entail a bigger outlay, all the works under the residential road-building programme would still be carried out, a Roads Ministry spokesman pledged.

The government and road contractors had signed an agreement covering the programme in 2009. Contractors recently demanded that the rate per kilometre fixed in that agreement should be revised to take account of price hikes in one of the main constituent materials of asphalt, bitumen.

Some 100 of the 400 or so roads which were meant to be done under the 2008 programme are still unfinished and threaten to remain so if the road contractors are not adequately compensated.

The spokesman said a clause in the 2009 agreement covered the eventuality of a rise or reduction in the price of asphalt. However, the contractor’s demand still needed to be approved by the Contracts Department, which has asked contractors toprovide more details about the new rates they are asking for. Transport Malta too had to be involved in the decision.

The spokesman said the rising cost could be absorbed within the existing budget for road works “without impacting the residential road programme”.

But for three mayors who were directly affected by this refusal to work unless the rates are changed, the contractors should honour their commitment.

Last week road projects in Luqa, Żejtun and Mellieħa stalled because contractors who were given the job said they could not proceed at the going rates.

The mayors of these localities complained that although they understood the contractors’ concerns, the agreement was there and they had to honour it.

Mellieħa’s PN mayor Robert Cutajar said Transport Malta had to rebuild two roads in Manikata and another two in the Santa Marija area. He said the council had informed the residents that their road was going to be done up and now could not go back on its word. He said two of these roads should have already been completed.

Similarly, Żejtun Labour mayor Joe Attard said the road which TM had to rebuild was the last one which still needed doing in his locality.

He complained that residents would have to continue living on a disastrous road because of this complication.

However, Labour Luqa mayor John Schembri said even councils were finding it difficult to engage contractors to do up roads through the Private Public Partnership Agreement, with the contractors also refusing to do work under the rates set in that agreement.

When contacted, one contractor said his firm was losing “thousands of euro” even on small resurfacing projects not to mention the larger rebuilding jobs that required excavation.

He said the contractors would like to honour their agreements but, at the end of the day, they were unsustainable. “I have people working with me who have families. What should I do? Call them and tell them I don’t have work? Or should I accept the projects and have no money to pay them with? This is our dilemma,” he said.

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