Work on the three tranches of roadworks is steadily moving ahead even in the hotest days of mid-summer.

The work is being done is “a huge improvement” on the way roads in Malta are usually built.

But it has still not proved possible to get all involved to agree on having one common service duct for all the utilities.

Elsewhere in Europe, and indeed in countries such as Tunisia and even Libya from as far back as 1982, roads are built in a quicker and more logical way. A service duct is dug along the side of the road and mass produced concrete service ducts, two metres high, are laid. All the utilities are placed in this service duct so that the road does not need to be dug up whenever there is any fault or problem.

But the Italian contractors doing the Fifth

Protocol road network have found it impossible to convince the Maltese utilities to agree on using one service duct.

Some just rule out being placed in the same service duct with the others and the arguments were long and very loud, it was said.

The result is that the roads now being rebuilt are criss-crossed by a series of ducts housing the various utilities – something which is just not done anywhere else in Europe and in the world.

Besides, the ducts are still being laboriously done by building stones, which is far too time consuming compared to the use of precast cement ducts as used elsewhere.

When ready, the roads will be far better than

the ones we have got used to, but apart from this lack of agreement on using one duct, the

possibility will always remain, said an architect, that a serious problem will require the road to be dug up once again, thus destroying all the good work done.