The Malta Labour Party leader said yesterday that the Merchants Street paving project was the clearest example of the incompetence of the Gonzi administration. In the last five years three dates had been given for the project’s completion – winter of 2004, mid-2006 and now February, 2008. The costs varied too – Lm200,000, Lm500,000 and Lm1 million.

Alfred Sant said the Nationalist government first announced plans to embellish St John Square and Merchants Street in May, 2002, at a cost of Lm200,000. Nothing was ever done. A year later Minister Francis Zammit Dimech announced new paving plans, valued at Lm500,000, to be completed by 2006. Again, nothing happened. Then last May Minister Ninu Zammit said the project would cost Lm1 million, to be completed by the coming February.

But last month all work on the project stopped – the paving slabs had not arrived. That was due to the wrong specifications being issued for the slabs. Mr Zammit himself admitted it was a technical error. The appeals board for public contracts this month ordered the works division to issue another call for paving slabs.

Dr Sant recalled that even the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association had expressed disappointment that the work was taking so long, harming tourism irreparably. The commercial community, too, was hit.

What was happening in Merchants Street and St John Square, Dr Sant said, was a clear sign of the incompetence of the Gonzi government. And at the same time no one was assuming responsibility for all the confusion being created. The government, he said, should not try to avoid its duties.

Instead of turning out as a project that embellished the capital city, Dr Sant said, the St John Square and Merchants Street works ended taking inordinately long not for lack of resources, but because of gross incompetence in planning.