An elderly woman hobbled over a wobbly wooden pallet to reach her front door as she avoided stone slabs, cables and a non-existent pavement.

On the opposite end, two mothers negotiated a makeshift metal ramp supported by two bricks as they pushed their children’s buggies, but could not stop one of the front wheels getting stuck.

This was the scene in Victoria’s main road last week and it all happened in the space of just two hours The Sunday Times spent on site.

Further up the road, a worker vanished behind a cloud of dust as he cut a stone slab with a chaser with little regard for residents and shoppers.

The government transport agency responsible for the road works confirmed this breached environmental regulations.

“It should never have happened in the first place,” a spokesman for Transport Malta said, adding tha a supervisor was employed to monitor works.

This newspaper passed on a photo of the incident and the agency pledged to take the necessary internal action.

However, the inconvenience of having this main thoroughfare pulled up will not go away any time soon. According to Transport Malta the target date to complete the works is August 12.

Residents have had enough.

“It is not funny anymore,” an irate reader wrote in an e-mail to this newspaper, accompanied with photos of open trenches.

He said people were “suffering and losing money” and called for responsibility to be shouldered.

His sentiments were echoed by a waitress who works in one of the area’s cafés.

She told The Sunday Times she could not understand why the road was asphalted at the beginning of May when the Villa Rundle garden was inaugurated and Cabinet held its first meeting in Gozo, only to be pulled up again two days later.

The Transport Malta spokesman said the temporary asphalting was a contractual obligation linked to the Lejlet Lapsi cultural event held in Victoria.

“Such an event has an economic and social impact on Gozo and similar provisions are in place for Easter, carnival and Christmas time, should the need arise,” the spokesman said.

He also justified the road markings that were painted on to the half-finished stretch of the road in front of the Gozo football stadium, where manholes stick out from the freshly laid asphalt.

“This road has been temporarily open to traffic on base course (the first layer of asphalt) since Easter.

“Temporary line markings were placed to guide traffic during this temporary use.”