We published a leading article about the state of the roads last week, and it seems that we will have to harp on about the state of them again. Rather than putting together a task force to at least fill in potholes that are the size of craters, we only hear of procrastination and plans to do this and that in the future.
The rains which came down in torrents in February did a lot of damage. Some of it could not have been prevented, but we are sure that with the new road building techniques and new ‘standards’ that they are being built to, they should have held up a bit better.
To be fair, the roads which are the most damaged are those which are old and which were built shoddily in the first place. But our ‘whatever goes’ attitude has caught up with us. When roads used to be dug up in the past and just ‘fixed’ any old way, it was a recipe for disaster and we saw that disaster this winter.
It is unacceptable for a country such as Malta, which is supposedly a developed one in the modern western world, to have roads which are so abysmally bad. Even third world countries have better roads than some of the ones which we have to endure on a daily basis and this is no exaggeration.
It has become more and more common to see people pulled up at the side of the road with burst tyres, buckled wheel rims and worse.
The most infuriating thing about it is that we do all pay road tax and it begs the question… what for? Motorists are effectively in a situation where they are paying the authorities to manage terrible roads which cause damage to our vehicles. So not only are we paying road tax, we are having to pay for damages incurred despite the money we have forked out that is supposed to go towards the upkeep of the roads themselves.
The next point we are about to mention was also put forward in last week’s leader, yet the silence from the authorities has been deafening. If people in Malta had a way of finding a good enough lawyer with enough mettle, then at least a third of the country could sue the government for the actual damage that is caused to vehicles on a daily basis.
We understand that the whole of Malta cannot be dug up and resurfaced at one go – there would be absolute chaos. But the authorities must go beyond indentifying roads that need attention. They actually need to act on that information and get down to business. We reiterate, our roads are in a shameful state. They are an embarrassment to us as a people. They are also a hazard and a nuisance because of the damage they cause to our cars, not to mention the fact that they also contribute towards accidents as people swerve to avoid them. There is no excuse, some roads need fixing, but others need to be rebuilt from scratch – and properly.