To say Minister for Urban Development and Roads Jesmond Mugliett has had a challenging year would be an understatement, with repeated calls from the Opposition for his resignation and the driving test examiners debacle to be grappled with.

The calls for his head, two of which were issued as recently as this month, had stemmed from problematic roadwork such as the delays on the Manwel Dimech Bridge and the St Paul’s Bay bypass, as well as the cash for licences scandal.

Mr Mugliett is surprisingly frank when questioned about the contentious issues, the first of which is the bypass – one that was only resolved by threatening an offending developer with expropriation procedures.

The road, rebuilt at a cost of Lm3 million, had been damaged by excavation works carried out by Polidano Brothers at a site adjoining the road – leaving a 300-metre stretch incomplete since 2000.

But it was only recently that the government coerced the contractors to make good on and repair the damage.

After a long standoff between the government and Charles Polidano, also known as ic-Caqnu, Mr Mugliett confirms that repair work by the contractor is now underway.

“At the moment Polidano is repairing the damage done,” Mr Mugliett confirmed. “He is shoring up the area that was excavated, which will hopefully rectify the damage done.”

Commenting on the drawn-out negotiations that have finally, it seems, led to accountability and action, Mr Mugliett acknowledges a tough stance on the government’s part had been required.

“I think we showed Polidano we were not going to wait forever for him to own up. We eventually convinced him if he did not intend to make good the damage, we would have to take extraordinary measures to ensure he would. Polidano, at the end of the day, agreed to carry out the work.”

When twisting the infamous developer’s arm, such “extraordinary measures” included the threat of expropriating the land in St Paul’s Bay from Polidano – a very real threat still hanging over reparatory work.

“We had begun the expropriation procedures and they had reached quite an advanced stage,” Mr Mugliett explains. “We have now put them on hold and we will only fully retract the expropriation procedures once Polidano finishes the shoring work.

“If something happens and the work is stopped midway, we are still holding that ace up our sleeves.”

During negotiations, Polidano had also proposed swapping the land in St Paul’s Bay, where the damage to the road had been done, for land owned by the government in Siggiewi adjoining his Monte Kristo vineyards.

Considering the respective values of the lands, however, such a deal would have been to the government’s detriment – leading to the threat of simple expropriation.

The Manwel Dimech Bridge has been another sore point on Malta’s transportation network, but Mr Mugliett does not consider the project as falling under the remit of “normal” work, but rather one requiring specialised expertise, which, he says, explains the delays to a certain extent.

Sections of the media have blasted the ministry and the Malta Transport Authority over a perceived reluctance to impose financial penalties against the contractor for the delays, and have alluded to Mr Mugliett’s business partnership with project consultant Robert Sant in a separate architectural firm.

“Robert Sant,” Mr Mugliett clarifies, “is consulting on the bridge project through a company to which I am not a party, am not a shareholder in and in which I am not involved in any way. The Opposition was invited to the Public Accounts Committee to substantiate its claims to the contrary, but did not want to take up the challenge.

“I have also been distancing myself from what used to be my professional office and I do not participate in its profits. But the Opposition prefers to make a big deal out of these so-called conflicts of interest.”

While it is being alleged that Robert Sant’s firm is profiting from delays on the bridge contract and that they are not being challenged by the authorities, Mr Mugliett is adamant that the weight of the penalties, as well as the ways and means of imposing them, are being discussed.

“No one has said the penalties would be waived. The ADT and the Contracts Department are, in fact, discussing when and how these penalties should be imposed, which could be done during the contract or nearer its completion date.”

The Malta Transport Authority has also seen a period of troubled times, with the driving examiner bribes saga having seriously dented the ADT’s credibility.

Mr Mugliett commented, “I will not deny that the ADT had a credibility crisis. We have had controversies – mainly with driving examiners and sometimes also with road building projects.

“The driving examiners case was the one which hurt the most and it definitely detracted from the ADT’s credibility, particularly the driving tests themselves.

“But since then we have carried out a clean sweep of the examiners, engaged and trained new ones, established certain procedures such as the allocation of test candidates to the particular examiners in such a way that they were transparent and that there is no collusion.

“We have had our operations externally audited and we have continued to examine our own procedures – not just in the driving examiners sections, but an internal audit mentality has been instilled throughout a number of sensitive sections. This put the ADT on its toes, which, if taken from that point of view, has been a positive development.”

But apart from such turmoil, this legislature has been what Mr Mugliett describes as a “special period” in which Malta has benefited from “unique funding” – first from the European Union and also from the Italian Protocol.

Funding for roadwork from external sources amounted to a not unsubstantial E55 million which, coupled with funding derived from government budgets, spelt out a practical doubling of funding made available for road building.

Over the last four and a half years, he added, 56 kilometres of roads have been built while 55 per cent of the 450 new residential roads promised last year have already been completed.

Upcoming projects approved and for which tenders are to be released in the very near future include the Marsascala Bypass and the Ta’ Qali Crafts Village roads.

In the meantime, a major exercise was underway aimed at planning and tendering for new projects included in the new EU financing period that started this year.

The exercise identified major areas of traffic congestion in problematic areas in areas such as the Kappara and Addolorata junctions, as well as the stretch of road between Paceville and St Andrews – spots for which projects have all been identified and drawn up.

E150 million from the Malta’s five-year EU funding of E850 was eventually allocated for road projects, while further funding would also be derived from government budgets.

“Hopefully next year we will be tackling Council of Europe Road in Luqa, Marfa Road, the last remaining bits in Gozo and the roads leading to the cruise liner terminal,” he adds.

Two major projects aimed at solving long-standing traffic bottlenecks – multi-level junctions at the Kappara and Addolorata junctions – are both on the table.

The Kappara project, Mr Mugliett says, should be tackled in 2009 with a call for tenders to be issued sometime next year. The Addolorata project, meanwhile, could be expected to come on stream one or two years later.

A substantial proportion of the annual budget is also to be injected into an evolving ongoing maintenance programme, which Mr Mugliett points to as an essential element in the overall roads programme and one that is to become a permanent fixture.

“We now have an obligation to maintain the projects throughout their design life – you cannot design a road to last 25 years and never expect to have to intervene on that road at some point in time in those 25 years,” Mr Mugliett comments. “Once we are spending so much on capital projects, the maintenance expenditure has to be proportionate and we are creating a structure to do just that. The programme will be a strong intrinsic element of our works programme from 2009 onwards.”

Another project in the pipeline addresses traffic management and envisages the monitoring and management of traffic by the ADT through a network of CCTVs and information systems. The system is aimed at seeing the ADT become more hands on in managing traffic, public transport and parking.

A tender, Mr Mugliett added, is about to be awarded for the new trackless train system, while new forms of transport such as electric minicabs and open-top buses have also been introduced. Negotiations on the vertical connections project for Valletta are also expected to be finalised in the coming weeks.

“These have been major challenges,” he said. “Over the last three years the ADT has not only been struggling with controversies, it has been coming up with projects such as these, as well as others such as the park and rides and the CVA for Valletta.

“New ground has been broken in a number of areas within the ADT’s extremely wide remit, and I hope this will continue to be the thinking at the ADT in the coming years.”