Government is issuing a call for offers to rebuild 170 roads around the Maltese islands, Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg announced this morning.
This project forms part of government’s pledge to spend €700 million rebuilding roads over the next few years. This particular call is the second of its kind, with the first call having covered 120 roads.
The 170 roads include 52km of road and 85km of pavements, and will cost an estimated €70 million. The call will be issued in six sets, meaning that six contractors or consortiums will most likely be chosen. Together with the first call for offers, this would mean that 290 roads are being worked on, or will be soon worked on, around the islands
Of the first call for offers, regarding the original 120 roads, commencement of works on the first 31 residential roads has begun. That first call totalled €53.5 million.
The minister stressed that government is stressing on quality work, and said that when roads were done poorly, the contractor has had to rebuild them at his own expense.
Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government Silvio Parnis said that through Infrastructure Malta’s work, €100 million is being left in local councils’ pockets. He said that in the past road works were being undertaken on a management by crisis situation, yet today people want more quality roads, and said that this project is delivering.
PN statement
The PN, in a statement later in the day, said that while government originally promised that the €100 million spent each year on roads would include improving and extending infrastructural services such as those related to drainage and water, as well as removing cables from street level, none of this is actually happening.
The PN said that the government is working without a long-term plan and is, instead of making a leap forward in quality, going to spend millions of euros on covering up with tarmac instead of changing the infrastructural services found on the island and building canals for said services as happens abroad.
Our country, the PN said, needs innovative solutions through which roads can serve for the coming 50 years, and should not - because of government's lack of planning - require having to re-do them in the near future.