Last Tuesday, The Times carried an item under the title Roadworks Worry Engineers. Words chosen for headings are never incidental. The Times intended to suggest that there was something wrong with the engineering of the ongoing resurfacing works but then quoted Hugh Arnett (a former employee of ours who was designated in The Times report as a "traffic management consultant", whatever that means) and Tonio Darmanin ("a motoring enthusiast"). They may be worried but engineers they are not.

So even if there exists an engineer who might be "worried" about the ongoing roadworks, the report does not even claim to have spoken to one, even on an anonymous basis.

Resurfacing works and road rebuilding projects are different things. The former cost around a tenth of the latter and the guaranteed lifetime of the result is of about a fifth of the time. Resurfacing takes days to complete, rebuilding takes months. The difference is not unlike the difference between giving a room a fresh paint job and knocking the room down and rebuilding it from scratch.

And the metaphor can be stretched a little bit more. A room is not knocked down when the paint on its walls starts looking drab. When the surface on a road is eroded, resurfacing it will do for a few years. Naturally, roads come up for rebuilding at some point. That is what we are doing on the Marsascala and Żurrieq roads at this time. But even with the 25 year guarantee of those brand new roads, in a dozen years or so they will need resurfacing. Any engineer could tell you that.

We have a resurfacing programme and we have a rebuilding programme. We do not mean to suggest that Maltese roads are all in prime condition. To bring them all to that ideal condition we estimate we would need to spend some €700 million in one go. Quite apart from the fact that, to put that money together, government would need to stop paying social security benefits for a year, no one would be able to use the roads for a year or two while the road programme is completed. The option is impractical for at least those two reasons. And, even if we were to do such a thing, resurfacing would still need to start within a few years because nothing lasts without maintenance.

The Times' "story" seems to have been provoked by the fact that we have been prioritising and accelerating road works ahead of the Papal visit. We fail to see what is objectionable about a clean up and a paint job before a special visitor comes along. But the report seems undecided on what we should have done: not resurface the roads and leave them exactly as they were or shut them all down for a year or so while they're being rebuilt whether they needed to or not.

Allow me to assure readers that:

1. The accelerated roadworks currently underway are part of our yearly resurfacing programme but we thought fit to focus especially on roads the Papal cortege will be driving on. It is not like no one will be using them after he leaves.

2. There is nothing in the quality of the resurfacing underway that need "worry engineers". These are quality maintenance jobs. They are not road building works and they were never presented as such anyway.

Editor's note

Ms Borg Mizzi says that "the report does not even claim to have spoken to one (an engineer), even on an anonymous basis". Perhaps she should read the item again as it clearly attributes comments to "one road engineer" and to "Another engineer". The agreement with them was that they would speak on the basis of anonymity and The Times respects that.

The Times also sought comments from Transport Malta on the roadworks days before the item in question appeared. It also contacted the Transport Ministry a day before. None replied, apart from Ms Borg Mizzi's letter sent to The Times the day after the item was published.