Transport Malta has continued to ignore questions concerning the recent repaving of sections of Melita Street, Valletta.

The Times last month reported on the uneven slabs and shattered pavements lining the section of Melita Street between Merchants and Battery streets.

But the report could not name the contractor responsible, because the tender photocopy provided by Transport Malta did not include contractor details.

E-mails to the transport authority requesting such details and asking whether the repaving contract included penalty provisions for unsatisfactory work have yet to be answered, exactly one month after the first article appeared.

Instead, Transport Malta wrote to criticise the article’s “sensationalist” tone in a letter to the editor (see page 16).

In the letter, Transport Malta argued that the road’s worn-out state was due to vehicle use “and not poor workmanship”.

Criticism about the two-week wait for answers to questions about repaving projects was also unwarranted due to the volume of information requested, an authority spokeswoman added.

The Times had originally asked for the tender documents of the recent Valletta repaving projects, citing Melita Street and St John Street specifically.

Having first been told that such tender documents were “too complicated” to be handed over, The Times subsequently received a file full of photocopied tenders two weeks later. Transport Malta also took exception to criticism about Melita Street’s shattered pavements, saying the project was still a “work in progress” and that pavements are set to be fixed separately. According to a tender photocopy handed to The Times, Melita Street’s €160,000 repaving – originally scheduled for completion by August 2011 – was meant to include “footpath construction and reinstatement works”.

Transport Malta did not say whether the cost of laying proper pavements will be over and above the €160,000 already paid or when it expects the pavements to be laid.

Almost three months after the road was repaved, its pavements remain in a sorry state, although workmen were seen pasting a concrete mix into some of the pavements’ more gaping crevices some weeks ago.

The Times has now filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act asking for further information about the Melita Street repaving project.

Aside from the name of the contractor responsible, The Times has also asked for details about any penalty provisions included in the Melita Street tender, whether any such penalties were applied and for a copy of the tender document related to the laying of the street’s pavements.