Mayor has the transport watchdog in line of fire
‘Council turned into a scapegoat’
Mellieħa mayor Robert Cutajar yesterday hit out at Transport Malta, accusing it of shying away from assuming its share of responsibility for traffic chaos in the locality.
Local councils understand a locality’s problems better than any external authority. That’s what they were created for
Mr Cutajar and his fellow councillors have been vociferously criticised over the past weeks for the decision – subsequently reversed by Transport Minister Austin Gatt – to ban non-residents from driving through the town.
Commuters have had little choice but to drive through the locality’s main thoroughfare, with the reconstruction of the Mellieħa bypass leading to traffic diversions.
But Mr Cutajar yesterday said the council had been turned into a scapegoat for a situation that was ultimately Transport Malta’s doing.
Flanked by four councillors representing the two major political parties, Mr Cutajar laid into the transport watchdog.
“Decisions were taken by consensus between ourselves, Transport Malta, the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprise - GRTU and the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association. But the final say, and the ultimate responsibility, lay with the transport authority.
“When the matter made newspaper headlines, the least we expected was for Transport Malta to assume responsibility for the diversions. But they haven’t issued a single statement and, instead, let us (the council) take all the blame,” Mr Cutajar complained.
A Transport Malta spokesman said the authority would not comment until it got written word of the council’s claims.
Mr Cutajar accused critics of adopting a “two weights, two measures” approach to Mellieħa residents.
“We were lambasted for having a diversion exclusive to residents but other localities in Malta and Gozo get exclusive resident parking.”
He bemoaned the state of the locality’s roads. “Summer is just around the corner and Mellieħa, which hosts 18 per cent of tourists, looks like a construction site. It’s impossible,” he said.
Aside from the bypass reconstruction, extensive works along the Ċirkewwa road and the construction of a large hotel in the area have left Mellieħa looking the worse for wear.
Ċirkewwa roadworks are set to disrupt Gozitans’ Go service tomorrow night, with the company saying customers there would experience a disruption of service between 2 and 6 a.m.
Reconstruction of the bypass is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year but works are already six weeks behind schedule.
Mr Cutajar said that following the minister’s intervention the contractor responsible had agreed to increase the number of workers on site. This was projected to halve the delay and result in one lane of the bypass opening to traffic by mid-June, three weeks later than the original end-of-May target date.
Mr Cutajar said the council was doing its utmost to ease inconvenience for residents and Mellieħa’s business community and was paying for a warden to roam George Borg Olivier Street seven hours a day to ensure traffic flowed smoothly.
“Local councils understand a locality’s problems better than any external authority. That’s what they were created for,” he said. “We just hope nobody imposes decisions detrimental to the Mellieħa community on us.”