The Malta Labour Party is taking full advantage of government projects that have been delayed or stalled to use them as examples of what Labour leader Alfred Sant says is the “government’s incompetence”. Needless to say, Labour is saying that if the government cannot fulfil its promises in delivering its projects, then it is not fit to lead the country.

Dr Sant has been busy touring a number of such projects over the past weeks. Earlier this week he went to Merchants Street in Valletta where the project there has been stalled following a technical error, much to the inconvenience of the Valletta business community.

Yesterday, the MLP leader was at the Crafts Village at Ta’ Qali, another project that has been promised but is taking long in the making.

He has also harshly criticised the delay in the rebuilding of the Manwel Dimech bridge in St Julian’s. The two decks were supposed to have been completely finished this month but, as things stand now, not even the south-bound part of the bridge is ready, let alone the other side. It is not known when the project will now be completed.

Perhaps the government’s mistake on this one is that it was too eager to finish the project quickly so that it established deadlines that could not be met and now is facing the consequences. Perhaps it wanted to avoid a repetition of history – on two occasions, work on the Regional Road was conducted mostly under a Nationalist administration in the late 1960s and mid-1990s, only to be finished and opened by a Labour government. Labour spokesmen have already said that this bridge could again be a lucky charm for the party.

Labour has also taken the cue from the sewage outfall in Balluta Bay in St Julian’s to hold a press conference on site to openly denounce the difficulties that there have been to resolve a matter that has even involved the law courts.

In the past, Labour has always been actively criticising the government on these and other similar issues, as it is the opposition’s duty to do. The most famous cases are the Mater Dei Hospital saga and the completion of the Mgarr and Cirkewwa terminals.

No doubt, it is its duty to push the government into fulfilling its promises by meeting the deadlines and remaining within the budgeted costs of capital projects. Of course, it does not mention the many other projects that have been completed in time and within the established cost.

For its part, the government must be more careful in speaking about deadlines and then finding out, soon afterwards, that the project cannot be completed in time because of this problem or the other.

Sometimes one gets the impression that ministers are somehow too quick in establishing time-frames, and this is especially so when an election is round the corner and the government is hard-pressed to finish what it has started. In the end, however, it is the government that suffers the most when these deadlines are not met – because the opposition is the first to point out such deficiencies and, secondly, the public is also correct in demanding more accountability.

One understands that before works start, it is impossible to determine exactly how long it will take to be completed. But, on the other hand, it must also be said that there have been several occasions when the deadline was missed by not only weeks, but months and months on end. This is what irks most – people do understand a delay of a week or two, but when the end is nowhere near, then they are right to complain and raise questions.