The number of road improvement projects is significant and a welcome relief for those who believe the country’s infrastructure has been neglected for too long. The management of these road projects is complex if professional standards are to be respected.
The success of road improvement initiatives has to be judged on the criteria of timeliness, cost efficiency and respect for the laws that aim to minimise the negative impact on the environment.
Work to widen the Tal-Balal road, between Naxxar and San Ġwann, started almost two months ago. When completed it should ease traffic congestion in the Mater Dei Hospital and University area. It now results that, contrary to what was promised by Transport Minister Ian Borg, the pro-ject will take twice as long to finish, with completion now forecast for November. This delay indicates that the pretext for rushing the project before Planning Authority permits were in place was at best flimsy.
The scholastic year has started. The Tal-Balal project is a cause of even bigger road jams in a critical arterial road in the centre of the island. The inability of government departments to complete pro-jects on time, within budget and in full respect of regulations has become endemic even within Infrastructure Malta that is expected to set an example of efficient project execution.
The changes made in the Tal-Balal project seem to have been a knee-jerk reaction of the project planners at Infrastructure Malta when they realised that their original plans were inadequate to ease the traffic pressures there. Not only did the project managers, with the nods and winks of their political masters, roll over their heavy equipment before permissions were issued but they also infringed on private property before advising the owners of their intention to expropriate land and put potential archaeological remains and historic buildings at risk.
It is ironic that the government has issued a White Paper aimed at injecting some discipline in the construction industry by imposing fines for infringements. Presumably, starting construction work without the necessary planning permit will be considered a significant breach, unless the offending contractors happen to be working on a government project.
There is no doubt that whenever the Tal-Balal road project is completed, it will ease traffic in the area. One just hopes that the actual expenditure will be within the €4 million budgeted for this project. One also augurs that owners whose land has been expropriated to widen this road will be adequately compensated.
What remains indelible is the encouragement of moral hazard as a result of Infrastructure Malta’s decision to roll over planning regulations to speed up the completion of the project. Who is to blame private developers when they infringe planning rules by building structures that have still not been sanctioned by the Planning Authority?
The execution of projects financed by taxpayers’ money should be done professionally. After the free school transport botched project, we are now faced with yet another project that, at best, has stalled and, at worst, has shown that government ministries and agencies believe that, unlike all ordinary people, they are above the law.
Dr Borg may want to prove he can get results by hook or by crook. He is indeed not setting a good example of good public governance.
This is a Times of Malta print editorial