Just a week or so after work has begun on the Council of Europe Road, the road that leads out of the airport, there already are complaints.

Nationalist MP Mario Galea yesterday asked why work on such strategic sites is not carried out night and during the day at the weekend. After all, Mr Galea pointed out, there are no residents there and work can thus be prolonged and taken in hand at the weekends.

Urban Development and Roads Minister Jesmond Mugliett agreed: the traffic management systems look good on paper, he said, but when they are tried out, they rarely look as good.

Mr Mugliett also pointed out that work on such projects generally has a slow uptake at the beginning but then work increases as time goes by. This can be seen happening in Gozo where work on the Dwejra to Victoria road, once again with EU funds, has begun some weeks ago and momentum has picked up, so much so that last weekend work was continuing.

In roads such as the Council of Europe, there are still unsolved issues such as where the services will be passed, and this takes time to resolve.

MP’s questions ‘disappear’

Labour MP Joe Mizzi yesterday complained that he had written a number of parliamentary questions to Mr Mugliett and they were not replied by yesterday. With Parliament rising on its Easter Recess, he said, there is a good risk these questions will not be answered on time.

Mr Mizzi insisted he was not necessarily blaming the minister for this.

Mr Mugliett said he usually replies to around 20 questions a day and there are no Joe Mizzi held-back questions still to answer. If he gets the questions by this morning, he would do his best to reply to them by this evening.

The Speaker asked the Clerk to investigate what happened to these ‘lost questions’ and later on reported that there are no pending questions by Mr Mizzi.

Mr Mizzi said this means the system is not working. He can tell when, how and to whom had he given the questions and was certain he had done this. This is not the first time questions have disappeared.

The Speaker asked Mr Mizzi to provide more information about the questions.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, himself a former Speaker, said a better system is easily found, such as through emails which leave an audit trail behind them.

The Speaker however reminded Dr Gonzi that this system already exists, although not all members use it.

Mr Mizzi insisted that an even simpler system would have a written receipt given by the Speaker’s staff for every PQ handed in, and Dr Gonzi agreed to this as well.

Tunnel under Manikata

Mr Mugliett yesterday explained the reasons behind the building of a tunnel underneath Manikata.

Replying to an Evarist Bartolo question, Mr Mugliett said that the road uphill from Xemxija to Mellieha is saturated with traffic and cannot be widened. The best alternative solution that has been proposed, suggested by the French consulting company BCEOM, is the building of a new road between Mellieha and Xemxija.

During a consultation meeting held last week, Mr Mugliett added, the residents who may be affected by this were consulted and he has committed himself to re-examine the proposal.

Dyslexic students

A total of 101 students who claimed they suffer from dyslexia asked for extra time in the Matsec and Sec examinations this year, Education Minister Louis Galea told Labour MP Carmelo Abela.

64 of them asked for a reader during the exam.

Littering

Up till 21 March this year, the police have arrested 10 people and will be charging them with littering. And local councils have, during the same time frame, handed out no fewer than 460 tickets to people caught littering, Interior Minister Tonio Borg told Mr Abela.

An ever increasing capacity

The 1998 agreement between the government and the red minibus cooperative stated that the seating capacity was to increase from 14 to 18.

ADT has now suggested that the seating capacity is brought up to 22. The minibus cooperative suggested it is increased to 28 but a vehicle with such a number of passengers cannot be considered as a minibus, Mr Mugliett told Labour MP Charles Buhagiar.

Meanwhile, with regard to the white minibuses, the 1998 agreement between the government and the Rent-A-Car-Association had accepted a request to increase the seating capacity from seven to 10. But since the market had minibuses with a seating capacity in excess of 10, these vehicles were allowed into Malta but the seats in each of them had to be reduced to 10, the minister said.